Murphy, Mary Lou

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ORAL HISTORY OF MARY LOU MURPHY
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
November 29, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is November 29, 2012. I am Don Honeycutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC, 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Mrs. Mary Lou Murphy about living in Oak Ridge. May I call you Mary Lou?
MRS. MURPHY: Please do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Please state your full name, date of birth, and place of birth, please.
MRS. MURPHY: Mary Louise Sewell Murphy. August 20, 1940. Middlesboro, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mary Lou, what was your father’s name and the place of birth and date?
MRS. MURPHY: Bill Sewell. Barbourville, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the date?
MRS. MURPHY: It’s November the 9th, and I - I know I’ll say the wrong year, but it was in the 20’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s name, maiden name before she was married?
MRS. MURPHY: Gordon. Frances Louise Gordon Sewell.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And her birthdate?
MRS. MURPHY: She was July the 29th and, again, I have to stop and count back. I know she’s - was 19 years old when I was born. So, I can figure it out that way when I can’t remember the year.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the place of birth?
MRS. MURPHY: Middlesboro, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s school history? Do you recall what his school history was?
MRS. MURPHY: He went to Middlesboro High School and graduated from that; and over the years he took a few college courses here and there, but he did not have a degree.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s school history?
MRS. MURPHY: My mother graduated from Middlesboro High School; and then, when she was living in Oak Ridge, she decided to take a licensed practical nursing course, and she graduated from that. She worked in the Oak Ridge Hospital in the Emergency Room and the Delivery Room and also as Dr. Eversole, the surgeon’s nurse.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about sisters and brothers?
MRS. MURPHY: I have three brothers. Bill - he’s about three years younger than I am, and he also graduated from Oak Ridge High School and was - in his adult life he served as the Director of Recreation after Mr. Yearwood, who had been the longtime director, died. And then I have a brother named Frank, who worked for the county and dealing with all sorts of waste collections and that kind of thing. He worked there for many years and has a similar position in Knoxville about recycling. And then I have a brother Joe, who works at the plant as electrician.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall their places of birth?
MRS. MURPHY: All in Oak Ridge. No, no, I’m sorry. The two younger ones were in Oak Ridge, and my older brother - the oldest brother was in Ravenna, Ohio; and we must have come here not too long after he was born.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of work did your father do before Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: He pretty much always has been an electrician.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work?
MRS. MURPHY: Not really until she began to do the nursing things, and, yes, and then she did work at the hospital, the Oak Ridge Hospital, in the departments that I mentioned.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But before Oak Ridge she didn’t work?
MRS. MURPHY: Uh-huh.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why your father came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t really know. I think that he just realized this was a job, and he could – he was able to get offered a job; and all I know is here we came.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was your mother and father’s first home?
MRS. MURPHY: In Middlesboro, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And they were in Middlesboro at the time -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, um-hum.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That they came to Oak Ridge? How many, or how did they get to Oak Ridge? You mentioned your older brother Bill came. Do you recall how they came? By car or -
MRS. MURPHY: You know I tried to think of that when I knew this was going to be coming up, and I don’t have the slightest recollection, because we didn’t have a car when we came. I don’t remember moving here, how we got here; but at the first time that we moved here, we did not have a car. So, someone must have driven a truck or helped us to move some furniture.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall your parents talking about when they first came to Oak Ridge? Anything about the - how they - what they saw when they got here?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I just know what I can remember, and it was just the way we grew up with the streets being pretty muddy and the yards muddy and the boardwalks and all; and yet one thing that I remember, we - our first house was on Malvern Road off of Michigan, and there were people on that street that had various kinds of jobs in Oak Ridge, everything from - well, my dad being an electrician, and then I know one of the top scientists lived on that street and other jobs in between but primarily all connected to the work that was being done at the plant, about which we knew nothing. But the neatest thing was that the neighbors - it was like they became your family because none of us had family here, and so it was a wonderful place to live, even with all the hardships of the mud and the deprivations of things that you couldn’t get during the war. But, still, it was a good place. I remember that the people next door I called Aunt Lily and Uncle Claude for the rest of their lives and just because that’s more or less what they became while we lived in that environment of starting something so new.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old were you when you remember -
MRS. MURPHY: Well -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Anything in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: I’m saying four to five. Some of the memories seem pretty vivid in my mind, and mostly I just have this feeling of things being built a lot, of walking a lot of places. For example, we would walk across Michigan Avenue and cut down through the woods to go to Jackson Square, which was where we would get our groceries. I - It seems to me like there was something going all the time—buses were running, people were working at all hours of the nights - night and day.
MR. HUNNICUTT: With that many people here in Oak Ridge there was a lot of busy activity going on.
MRS. MURPHY: It seemed like it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did - when did you - your family have a car? Do you recall?
MRS. MURPHY: We didn’t have one that first part of our living here. I don’t know that - if I’ve made this clear, but we came in about 1944-45, right along in there. And then when my dad’s job ended, we moved back to Middlesboro; and we then came back to Oak Ridge just a few years later when he was hired on again. At that time we had a truck, and that’s how we got to Oak Ridge the second time, and we did have that truck. But, honestly, it seemed to me like I rode the bus everywhere, as did my mother and my brothers, while my dad had the truck.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you recall your mother going to Jackson Square to grocery shop?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you went with her, obviously? Did - were your other brothers born at that time?
MRS. MURPHY: No, just Bill, who was three years younger than I was. And then we - the two other younger brothers were born during our second stay in Oak Ridge, and that’s when we had the truck. And we lived on California Avenue then, which is kind of funny because I guess I was about almost ten when we came back—nine going on ten—we’d been away about three years, and now I still live right off of California Avenue, just a few houses up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: If you can, describe how it would be to go grocery shopping with your mother, and she had two small children, and you had to walk to the grocery store and had to carry the groceries. Kind of describe that for me.
MRS. MURPHY: I have no idea how on earth my mother did that because we were going down through a path in the woods. She must have had Billy in a stroller is the only thing I can think of. I can just remember walking with her. Seems to me like we had on rubber boots all the time—those big, old, ugly, brown galoshes-like things—which everybody had and had to have. I don’t know how we got back home with the groceries, but then, again, you didn’t go down and get a whole bunch of stuff. You got what few things - you had the ration book kinds of things, so you could get just a few items. That’s something else I kind of remember. The neighbors that I mentioned on that street - it seemed to me like we traded out an awful lot of things, like eggs or sugar or whatever. If somebody was going to have a birthday but didn’t have all the ingredients for a cake, someone might be able to trade or give you or loan - or loan you or whatever the ingredients to make that cake. But we must not have been carrying back a whole lot of stuff. We didn’t live that far from Jackson Square, but it still would have been a hard walk with two small children and groceries.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, the neighborhood activity was like a little close network of -
MRS. MURPHY: Neigh -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Family members, but yet you wasn’t family members.
MRS. MURPHY: Right, and certainly there were people on that street that I can’t - don’t remember much about, but I just remember this sense of if you needed help, you were probably going to get it from anybody in the neighborhood.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about how your mother washed her clothes?
MRS. MURPHY: That one that I remember may be more when we came back to Oak Ridge; but it was one of those things that had the rollers in it, and you squeezed the clothes up through it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A ringer-type washer?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, yeah. Now that’s the one that I remember. I don’t know what we had earlier. Obviously, we washed somehow, but I do remember washboards; and she’d have this awful, brown soap-like stuff, and she’d do it on the washboard and then always, of course, hanging things out to dry.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you - do you recall that at the clothesline - that when your mother hung clothes out or went and retrieved her clothes that that’s where a lot of people gathered to have conversations, or, you know, the ladies talked at the clotheslines? Do you recall that?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t recall that, but I’m sure it’s true. I guess it would be where you had your clothesline in relationship to the person next door, perhaps.
MR. HUNNICUTT: This first house that you lived in off of Michigan, do you recall how the house - describe how the house was.
MRS. MURPHY: It was an A house, which is a very small house, which was alright at the time. My brother and I shared a bedroom. I’ve lived in an A, B, C, D, E; and I think the one that I didn’t live in was an F, which were kind of hard to get, and I don’t think there were very many of them. I always thought the highlight would be to have a D house, and we’ve got one that a family owned that also had four children before us; and so it’s pretty well worn out by now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what type of heat was in the A house?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, it was that thing where you - the coal men came by and gave you coal every so often, and I just took that for granted that that’s the way life was; but as I think back on it—my gosh!—here you are in this house, and you’ve got your walls painted, and you’ve got your coal coming in, and - it just - it was an odd experience. Didn’t seem strange to me at the time, but I can remember the coalman day. The dogs would bark and lot of noise and coal dust, and they’d shovel it in through this little door into your utility room, which a lot of people changed over into eating areas and things later, since it’s attached to the kitchen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of chores did you have to do as a child?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I expect I was supposed to pick up after myself and that kind of thing as a small child, but when my younger brothers were born, really I just did a lot of babysitting types of things and, especially, when my mother was working at the hospital. My dad did - sometimes he would do electrical work outside of working at the plant, so I was it; and really from maybe junior high on through high school I did a lot of, essentially, mothering, because they were little, little guys and just a few months apart.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned earlier that the family left Oak Ridge and came back. How old were you when the family left?
MRS. MURPHY: Okay, I remember going through kindergarten and Oak Ridge - in Oak Ridge, as well as first grade. And right at the end of that first grade year we went back to Kentucky, and then I began second grade. Third grade and fourth grade were also attended in Kentucky. We came back as I started fifth grade, so I’d say we were away about three years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the first school in Oak Ridge you attended?
MRS. MURPHY: Pine Valley.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And kind of describe a typical day at Pine Valley School that you can remember.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, again, probably mud, wearing these brown, ugly shoes and brown galoshes. Everybody had on undershirts underneath their clothes. But I just remember enjoying school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you walk to school?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, and that was something else I remember. The kids on our street pretty much walked together down a boardwalk at the end of Malvern, through the woods. Now, can you imagine a five year old going through the woods to Pine Valley? The neatest things happened to me, though, one time. I know I digress; but I was looking through a catalog of school films for the Oak Ridge schools, and I saw one that said, “Oak Ridge Schools, 1940-something or the other.” And I thought, “Goodnight, I - that’s about when I started school!” And so I got this, checked it out, and one day showed it to my class. I’d been trying to tell them what it was like to grow up here, and all of a sudden there was my mother in the film having a conference with my first grade teacher about me. And I don’t know what I’d done or whether it was just a regular conference kind of thing. But it was just the most surprising film - having her in it, but then seeing the rest of the film because it pretty well covered Oak Ridge for a few years. Had no sound, and it was all just glimpses of things that the Oak Ridge schools were doing and had that probably very, very few schools had, like music and art classes and phys. ed. classes and health care and nurses checking on you. And out on the playground we had good equipment, and there’s one of my kindergarten class raising the flag outside; it was included in that film. And the only reason I knew it was my kindergarten class is because I had some still photos that were taken that day of the same event.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember your teachers’ names?
MRS. MURPHY: One was Miss Fig. That was in kindergarten, and the other was Miss Jacoby in first grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall that all the kids, of course, they came from different backgrounds or parents did, did everybody kind of just blend together and be buddies and pals?
MRS. MURPHY: I guess that’s how I remember it. I don’t - I was awfully young at the time. I could think more about when I went - came back in fifth grade, and even then we were close. We would - in my sixth grade year I remember we would all go to Jackson Square on the weekends and go to the movies, hold hands. You know, we thought we were really big by then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, we’ll come back to when you came back to Oak Ridge.
MRS. MURPHY: Alright.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about the school years in Kentucky when you left.
MRS. MURPHY: It’s kind of a blur as far as school. It was a very, very old school. In fact, some of my aunts and uncles and grandparents even may have gone to school there, but it was one of those where the desks were attached—you know, the wooden desks with the iron sides, and there would be a seat which would fold up attached to the seat behind you; and you had a little ink well, but they were, you know, bolted to the floor—that kind of very, very old type of desk, school. It was rigid in many ways in terms of movement around, and everything was pretty much this teacher standing in front and the class would be out here. But I think they learned. I know they did. In fact, I thought when I got there, “Golly, I hope I can catch up; I’m not sure I know some of this stuff.” I don’t think it was any harder or any easier; it was just a different way of learning than in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of dress, clothing did you wear when you went to - that you can remember up through the fourth grade?
MRS. MURPHY: Dresses. We always had to wear dresses. I don’t remember ever having on pants. I can’t imagine going around in a dress all the time, but I did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when you left Oak Ridge you left the mud, and you left the galoshes behind.
MRS. MURPHY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what type of shoes did you wear?
MRS. MURPHY: I wanted some pretty, black, ballet-looking shoes; but I still had the old, brown, ugly things and the undershirts. And I wanted white boots or red boots so I could look like a majorette, but I still had the good old brown ones.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when your family moved back to Oak Ridge, why did they come back?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, job, again. It was a really good opportunity for my dad to come and be hired back on. I think probably the hiring was from a different contractor at that time; but it was the electrical work, and he worked in various places.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember who the contractor was when he first come to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I want to say Eastman, Tennessee Eastman? I meant to look that up before I came down here, because I have a picture of him working on some lights out at the plant, but that’s who I -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember which plant he worked at?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I think he must have been at Y-12 when we were here earlier. I do think he was - I know he ended up, I believe, at Oak Ridge National Lab, but he worked all over - was moved around to many different areas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you went through the third - second, third, and fourth grade in Kentucky. You moved back to Oak Ridge –
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: To start the fifth grade. And by that time was the mud still as bad, or was it gone by then?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t remember that there was any problem then. I came back to go to Elm Grove School and started in fifth grade there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did the family live?
MRS. MURPHY: On California Avenue, at the very top, and we then moved. As our family got a little bit bigger we moved; but, primarily, we lived in the eastern part of the city.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of house on California was it?
MRS. MURPHY: It was another A. Then when Frank and Joe were born, we were desperate, so we moved into, I believe, a C, which was on Everest Circle not too far from where we were living.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, tell me about Elm Grove School, how it was different from the school in Kentucky.
MRS. MURPHY: I think, just the very environment was so much more - well, I don’t know whether “relaxed” is the word, exactly, but learning was different. You might be called up in groups, and you had tables and chairs that could be organized differently in the room. You weren’t bolted to the floor with the kind of desk. So you had more informal grouping and maybe based on your ability to do math or to do reading. And I’m kind of thinking in Middlesboro that there would be a whole class of those who were, perhaps, better students; and then the other class would be those who were not as good. But in Oak Ridge it was kind of all mixed; and yet you were, perhaps, grouped and could walk up and join another group, depending on what the subject was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were in Middlesboro, what type of classes did you have that was different than Oak Ridge, or was there?
MRS. MURPHY: It was all in the same room. I mean, if you had any music at all, it would be because the elementary school teacher that you had might lead you in some singing or would ask you to do some sort of artwork, but there were no special classes at all. And that’s the thing that, I think, that was so different. I mean, you know, we went to phys. ed. and had teachers, and we went to music and had teachers and art and had teachers and library. There was a librarian who acted as a teacher about library skills. And there just seemed to be so much more movement and involvement with different teachers and different types of subjects, and everyone got to do them. And that was within the school itself. I still remember Elm Grove vividly for the kinds of things that went on there also after school, but I believe those must have been city-sponsored activities; but, you know, I can talk about that at some -
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, during the classroom activities or during the school day itself, you were able to move out of those classroom and go to other places when you came back to Oak Ridge because you had gym in the gym -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And things of that nature. So, in Kentucky it was pretty much combined -
MRS. MURPHY: Rigid.
MR. HUNNICUTT: To one room, and if the teacher didn’t have any musical background, you didn’t -
MRS. MURPHY: Absolutely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Have music, but if she had art background, you had art, so -
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall who your teacher was at Elm Grove?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, her name was Effie Gee, and she scared the peewadden out of me when I came back. I can’t tell you why, but she was really somebody that I was scared of, and I don’t know why.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, do you remember the ages of your teachers in Kentucky versus the ages of teachers in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: The ones in Kentucky seemed very, very old; and then when I was just about to go into fifth grade there and came back here, I would have had a younger, much younger teacher. They seemed to have been permanent at that school forever. In fact, I know that many of my aunts and uncles had had some of the teachers that I was also having. Effie was also a little bit older; I began to appreciate her more as I - I guess maybe I was just nervous about having moved and being the new person and wanting to behave and not get in any trouble. And then I had Fern Dewer in sixth grade. She was a marvelous teacher in that she read to us every day after lunch, and I think I went to school, primarily, happily every day because of her reading to us, and I -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you visit the library very much?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes. I loved it! That was something we didn’t have in Middlesboro. We had a town library, and I visited it all the time; but we didn’t have a school library.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you visited the library, did the librarian read to you; or did she teach you how to look up books? How was that atmosphere?
MRS. MURPHY: Probably both. I just remember learning some library skills in there, but also being read to, which I loved. And I later became a reading teacher, so maybe that’s where some of it started.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, at recess time going to Elm Grove, what did you do outside at recess?
MRS. MURPHY: We played an awful lot of games, kind of organized in a way. You could go up and play on the swings and slides and things like that, but it seemed to me at Elm Grove we pretty much - if we went outside, there would be some kind of directed game. Maybe the teacher would start it; you didn’t have to play it, I don’t think, but seemed like we played together an awful lot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like school?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I was fine with it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you were a good student about going to school?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you walk to school at Elm Grove?
MRS. MURPHY: No, that was wonderful also, in that there was a bus that came by and you had a - I think I had a bus badge that you wore when you got on the bus that meant you - I don’t know whether we - I don’t think we paid anything for it or bus tickets later. But the bus would take you to school, bring you home for lunch, if you can imagine, go back out and catch the bus back down to school, and then come home at the end of the day.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall whether Elm Grove had a cafeteria at that time?
MRS. MURPHY: They didn’t at that time. I know they added one on later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you know or - where did you go to catch the bus when you went to school? And tell me about getting on the bus to come back home.
MRS. MURPHY: Okay. If - when we went to - when I went to Elm Grove, there was a telephone pole a few yards up the road, not quite in front of my house, but all the kids would gather at that telephone pole to catch the bus—those that were going to school—and that’s about where we were let off, kind of a central telephone pole; but, you know, all you had to do was cross a yard or two, and you were back home. At school I remember being let out by the teacher kind of in a line to board the buses. It wasn’t just, “Good-bye, everybody; run down the hall and go home.” It was organized, which was, of course, “Be good in getting on buses.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did you know which bus to get on in the afternoon?
MRS. MURPHY: I have no idea. [laughter] In the film that I mentioned of Oak Ridge schools in their early days that I had the pleasure of seeing, there was a man in it at Elm Grove, a policeman directing traffic. He looked just like Barney Fife. Couldn’t believe it, but he must have been of help after school in getting us in the right bus or direction.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that photograph where he’s helping kids across Tennessee Avenue?
MRS. MURPHY: I think it is. Do you know -
MR. HUNNICUTT: That little shopping center?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, I’m familiar with that photograph.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall safety patrols in school?
MRS. MURPHY: Oh, yes. I think I was a safety patrol, and that was such a big deal. You watched people to be sure they weren’t running or skipping steps, and you’d make them go back if they did. That was a big deal in fifth and sixth grade. I think I went on a safety patrol trip sometime to go to Nashville. I don’t know why I can’t remember much about it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, how did you become a safety patrol?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t really know if that - it was taking turns or something, perhaps, or maybe you had to present yourself as a good citizen for a lengthy time before you would be, maybe, selected to have a turn. I know it probably alternated, ’cause everybody wanted to be one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, I’m a student in school. How do I know you’re safety patrol?
MRS. MURPHY: I had a white belt on. Came across like this, came around your waist, clicked together; and it had a real shiny badge on it that said “Safety Patrol.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, your job was to keep the kids kind of in line in school. Did you help after school, as well?
MRS. MURPHY: I think I must have gone out early, before the bell rang, and stood at the stairs; but I don’t know how I got on the bus afterwards if they, you know - I don’t think they went ahead without me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, they’d let the safety patrol on the bus.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I guess so. I -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Hold the bus till the safety patrol got there.
MRS. MURPHY: I guess they did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: After the sixth grade you went to junior high?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where was junior high school located?
MRS. MURPHY: It was above Blankenship Field, and it had been the high school, apparently, during the years that I was younger; and that’s where the high school was - classes were held. And then it was used as Jefferson Junior High School, and I went seventh and eighth grade there, which is funny. That configuration of ages has changed so many times. My brother ended up going sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth there; but I was only there for seventh and eighth.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you notice different right off of the attending Jefferson than Elm Grove?
MRS. MURPHY: No recesses that I remember. I think we might have gone outside as a part of a gym class. Then we - I remember having to take Home Ec., which I was just horrible at. One of my Home Ec. teachers wrote on my report card, “Mary Lou is just a really nice little girl, but I am convinced she will never be able to operate a sewing machine.” [laughter]
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, how true was that statement?
MRS. MURPHY: It was absolutely true; I couldn’t even get mad or be upset. It was the gospel truth. I never did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about Phys. Ed., Physical Education classes? How different were they than Elm Grove?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, if you are familiar with Oak Ridge history, there was a man named Nick Orlando, who was the gym teacher on the boys’ side; and then we had the girls’ side, and we had a curtain that they pulled across the gym floor, so you had to be on your own side. But Nick somehow managed to entertain both sides occasionally. But it was serious stuff. You had to do exercises, and you had to have the white shorts and the white shirts and that kind of stuff; but it was a class.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the gym teacher’s name?
MRS. MURPHY: I think, at least part of the time, it was Bobbe Smith, a long time Oak Ridger. And I’m getting confused, but there was a John Teague?
MR. HUNNICUTT: John?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I don’t remember whether I had him or whether he was just around at the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was a shop teacher -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: For many years.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes. And he also lived on California Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, this curtain they pulled across the center of the gym…Was that just so that the girls or the boys wouldn’t aggravate the girls, or they wouldn’t - the boys wouldn’t be distracted and watch the girls, or why do you think they did that?
MRS. MURPHY: I think they thought that we would be better off not to be checking each other out, and I’d guess that that was the period in life where you did begin to check each other out; and some of us didn’t look so hot - didn’t want to be embarrassed by our sports ability or lack of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you required to take showers after gym class?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t remember. I kind of think so, but I don’t - I’m not real clear.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That seemed to be the age that you started having showers after physical education.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah. I remember one time Nick Orlando was having boxing for the boys, and he had me get in a ring with some boy and box. I don’t know why he did that, but I remember being -
MR. HUNNICUTT: You actually put on gloves?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah! Stupid.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did that turn out?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I just was dopey acting, I guess, and got out of there as soon as he’d let me. He was just entertaining people, I think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was quite an icon in Oak Ridge in his day.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, he was, and he could get by with things that if he tried anything - if anybody tried any of his things, they wouldn’t have worked. Another teacher that I had that was really different at Jefferson was Alice Lyman, the band director. I - one day she came around to the seventh grade classes and said, “Can any of you play piano?” And I raised my hand, just because I did take lessons. And she said, “I want you to come be in the band and play the bells,” which, you know, would have a keyboard kind of like a piano; and I did it. And that is another person of whom I was just terrified, and she was so stern and so demanding; and yet outside of school she was just lovely and very charming when I’d see her.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you learn from Miss Lyman?
MRS. MURPHY: I learned what fun it was to be in a group and play music as a group, and I had - I can’t thank her enough for having had that experience. She, truly, was one of those types of teachers. I can remember her going around; and if she didn’t like what a trumpet player might be doing, she’d stick something in the end of the trumpet or put her hand in it. And she was - she said what she thought; and she was very demanding, but that was something that I didn’t have. I doubt that any schools around here would have had much of an experience of getting to be in a band in junior high.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you participate at the football games and basketball games?
MRS. MURPHY: Maybe one kind of a show. And I - because I can remember us practicing, but maybe we would for one of the home games put on a little halftime - march out on the field and play a few songs.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about concerts in the auditorium?
MRS. MURPHY: A few, uh-huh. Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What are some of the other teachers and classes you took at Jefferson?
MRS. MURPHY: I had a Mrs. Cavett for a home room teacher. I remember working on writing and reading with her. The lady who had no faith in my sewing ability was Mrs. Lamp. I’m trying to think about art; that was always important to me - art and music.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was Mr. Clifford Smith the art teacher -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes!
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were there?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t think he was the teacher then, but I did know him and his family.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you caught the bus, and where did the bus let you off when you went to Jefferson?
MRS. MURPHY: Seems like it was around in the front. Seems like we - on a circle or something that kind of was around in the front. But you know what I don’t remember - I’m trying to think. Is that really the way it was, because going down the hill we had to catch the bus at a bus stop to get home, as I remember it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Across from the post office?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Or by the post office.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, so I must be thinking of coming into that circle maybe in a car or something. I have no remembrance, really, of doing anything as far as getting there; and I can remember going out of school and down the hill to the bus stop you’re talking about. I don’t remember how we got there, though. Did we have to walk up the hill to the school? I don’t remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The best I remember, that’s the case; all the buses let out across from the post office, picked you up in front of the post office -
MRS. MURPHY: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the afternoon, and you walked up the hill and down the hill.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I guess so. Gosh! How could one forget walking up that hill? I only remember going down it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was 52 steps -
MRS. MURPHY: Oh, my gosh!
MR. HUNNICUTT: Going up that hill. Were they concrete or wooden when you went to Jefferson?
MRS. MURPHY: Concrete.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the early days I believe they were wooden.
MRS. MURPHY: Really?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Someone else mentioned that. Do you recall any of the stores in Jackson Square that maybe you stopped before or after school?
MRS. MURPHY: Never at that age. Not when I was in Jefferson. I remember stores, but not - you know, I always had to get down and catch the bus and go back home. Now, I remember the movie theaters on weekends and things from Elm Grove on, because we would meet at the Ridge Theater or sometimes the Center, I believe it was - Center Theater.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Ridge Theater located?
MRS. MURPHY: Okay, down by Big Ed’s and right almost connected to it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What - in the summer time between school years, what did you do in the summer time for fun?
MRS. MURPHY: You know how Oak Ridge is so beautifully laid out with greenbelt areas around many of the homes. We had a good woods behind our house. There was a Boy Scout hut kind of thing in a clearing down in our woods. I used to go down in the - or around in those woods and spy on the Boy Scouts and play in that area. Now there again, how safe! A kid could go out and play in the woods and look around and walk around and pick up things, so I did a lot of things like that. I played with kids across the street; and then my family and I got into swimming with the Atomic City Aquatic Club, and we all swam in the summer as we got older.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your mother and father, as the kids grew up, do you recall what kind of outside the home activities they did?
MRS. MURPHY: You know, it’s funny how much activity was involved around that being in a swimming club - the team and all. That became kind of like a - well, those would be the people you would know because your kids were around their kids, and you became friends with those people. I remember my mother worked as a Gray Lady at the hospital before she went to work as an employee. My family went to St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, so they, you know, had some activities in that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you mentioned the family came back to Oak Ridge in a truck. Did they still have the truck, or did they have a car?
MRS. MURPHY: We had a truck the whole time we were on California Avenue, and I honestly don’t remember when we got a station wagon; but you can imagine with three boys and a daughter, you all couldn’t get in the truck, except that sometimes we would ride in the back of the truck, which you can’t do, I think, these days in a pick-up truck. But you can see how limited our transportation by that would have been.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, when you got the station wagon, was that a vehicle that had a lot more room inside?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, that’s how we got around then with four kids and parents.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about summer vacations? Did the family take any summer vacations?
MRS. MURPHY: Very few. We went once or twice to St. Petersburg and visited an aunt and uncle; we stayed at a hotel there on the beach. I remember a couple of summer vacations up in Big Ridge State Park as a family; we would get one of those little cabins up there, and they had swimming area and that kind of thing. But being in that swimming ACAC [Atomic City Aquatic Club] thing, seems like our summers were pretty much taken up with swim meets.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you learn how to swim in that organization?
MRS. MURPHY: I guess I did. I don’t remember how I - ’cause I don’t think I was an especially good swimmer. I went on and became a coach of it for the little kids and then also as an adult helped with it. But I was the kind that could teach more than I could, you know - I wasn’t that good a swimmer myself. My brothers were reasonably good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, tell me what you remember about the Oak Ridge swimming pool.
MRS. MURPHY: Cold. Huge. Just really kind of a sight, I think. When you first see it, you think, “Oh, wow!” because it was so much bigger than anything anybody had around here. When we swam as a team, we often had to go to meets that were pretty far away, because not that many towns had facilities that would allow them to have a swim team like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did the team travel?
MRS. MURPHY: Cars. Family. I can remember once, I think, going on a bus; but mostly families went. I have no idea how my family afforded that, because to go on to swim meets into Georgia and other places, other states, must have been very expensive.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Oak Ridge swimming pool located?
MRS. MURPHY: The same place that it is now - when I went to was there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the Grove Center area?
MRS. MURPHY: Spring, yes, uh-huh.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Back to school - when you started high school. And the high school was located where it is now; is that correct?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, um-hum.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about how different the high school was than junior high?
MRS. MURPHY: I think it was pretty overwhelming in a way; it was just huge. I wonder now whether it’s better for the ninth grade to be in high school, or was it better for the ninth grade to have been at Jefferson. But we were one of the groups that began high school in ninth grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you say that, are you talking about the maturity of your seniors versus the sort of the immaturity of your ninth graders?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, there were such good reasons to keep the ninth grade at a - at another - not send them on to high school right at the time. But I think that we managed. I remember, you know, feeling like it was a pretty big place, but you began to make friends and you had the ones from your middle school, I mean your junior high and your elementary school that were still friends in high school; and then you joined some activities. Again, I went into the band still playing the bells, which was not much of an instrument to play, but it was such fun. That gave me a good place. Girls didn’t have much to do in the way of sports at that time. There were not sports teams. And there were a few clubs and that kind of stuff, and I was on student council and activities around the school; but I think being in the band was a good thing because it was like belonging to a team or a group, so I kind of found a place there. And the man that - the boy that marched behind me in the band, I later married. So, it was a nice part of that, I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the type of dress? Was it different? Still wore dresses to school or -
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I don’t remember ever wearing pants to Oak Ridge High School. We surely to goodness had some activities where pants were allowed, but it must have been on weekends and things; but I don’t - I remember wearing these just straight skirts, a sweater, usually there would be a - it was set—two sweaters: a short-sleeved one, a long - a cardigan one pulled over it, and ballet-looking flats. Or sometimes with the sweater you’d have these little white collars that you wore. In that time there were supposed to be these poodle skirts and all that kind of stuff. I never had one. [inaudible 00:46:25] I must not have been quite in style, but it was in that time era. The boys wore - oh, that was in the happy days era of pink shirts, black pants, real thin belts, hair slicked back or sometimes t-shirts where you put your cigarettes over here and rolled up your shirt sleeves, so if you were really cool - But looking back at pictures of us in the annual, I didn’t see any wild looking styles. We all looked pretty conservative, I think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the style of the girls’ hair?
MRS. MURPHY: Mine is always short in the - I guess there were some pony tails and things like that, but I don’t think I ever changed my hair style or much of anything.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you take any different type classes in high school than junior high?
MRS. MURPHY: Took some art classes, which I just loved. I was not a talented artist, but I enjoyed it very much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you find that the curriculum was harder or about the same as junior high?
MRS. MURPHY: Everything was okay except math, and I really struggled always in math. I think at that point things just kind of caught up with me on math ability. I could do the computational types of things that you do in elementary and maybe in middle school; but as you got into more of the algebra, geometry, and advanced math, I really didn’t do very well. And I didn’t take very many science classes, other than what was required. As you can see, I think I was mostly language, art, that kind of thing, reading.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At what age did you start dating?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I had a few dates when I was in ninth grade, and I’m surprise that I got out of the house. I’m just surprised that my mother let me go. Very carefully supervised, I guess, but I had a few when I was in fourth grade—I mean, I keep saying fourth. I meant ninth grade and a few more in tenth grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were in high school and you dated, where did you go on dates?
MRS. MURPHY: To the movies. Drive-ins. Not necessarily drive-in movies but drive-in eating places.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the Snow White Drive-In?
MRS. MURPHY: Very well, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you recall about it?
MRS. MURPHY: The hamburgers, which are still what linger in my mind every time I smell a Krystal’s hamburgers. Kind of like that. I remember us going to a drive-in in the Elza Gate area. I think it was a type of Oak Terrace or something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oak Terrace had a restaurant up there.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall going to the Oak Terrace in Grove Center?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, and - but somewhere in that transition the one at Elza Gate was probably what I remember more than the one in Grove Center.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about activities? Did you bowl? Other than swimming, did you bowl, or did you play tennis or anything like that? Any other activities?
MRS. MURPHY: I had an awful lot of activities. As I said girls had limited sports possibilities in those days. I don’t know whether I would have or not, but primarily I continued swimming because we had a high school team and student council and, oh, I was Mary in the nativity. And, I don’t know, just - we were really busy; there were a lot of dance things going on that were sponsored either by the school or sponsored by some of the groups in the school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were they held?
MRS. MURPHY: At various places. One place I remember was - in Jackson Square there was a rec building there, and in part of the rec building they would let you have these open houses. Everybody would come, we’d dance, you’d paid your little bit of money to get in, and it’s a miracle to me as I look back on it—I don’t remember there every being any problems or fights or anything, but we’d just - we’d go there and dance every, say, Friday night or Saturday night. I didn’t go to the Wildcat Den. I don’t really know why, but I know a lot of people probably did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember Shep Lauder?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, I just didn’t happen to be around him that much. I worked while I was in high school, and that might have taken a little bit of my time, at Price Florist. And then also, you know, I mentioned babysitting a lot, and I just had a lot of responsibility at home that I pretty much had to help out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was Price Florist located where it is today on the Turnpike?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what did you do when you worked there?
MRS. MURPHY: Oh, I thought I was going to go up there and get to help work with flowers, and I ended up having to file stuff, which I hated. [laughter]
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you were the clerk instead of the florist. [laughter]
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, I surely was. To this day, when I smell flowers in a florist shop, I get kind of -
MR. HUNNICUTT: What other jobs did you have?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I worked as a swimming coach some in the summer, and then—I’m trying to remember how - the sequence of this—I was a playground director for several summers, you know, but I think I would have had to have been out of high school to do that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you said playground directors. What happened at the playground?
MRS. MURPHY: Well -
MR. HUNNICUTT: This was in the summer time I presume.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah. And, you know, the neatest thing - all as a younger person there were playgrounds that you could go to at - almost all the schools, seems like, or areas had a playground; and there would be all kinds of all-day activities there supervised by maybe two college-age kids or sometimes teachers who had a playground job for the summer. And, in fact, all up through elementary school were things that you could stay at school for, and they’d have activities. I remember once - sometimes at Elm Grove there would be dances for sixth grade kids, and you had to go and learn manners and how to dance and that kind of thing. Very organized types of things. But all kinds of activities and clubs, and if it wasn’t at your playground, it was all over town. You could go to all kinds of hobby clubs and doll shows and flower shows and just a million activities. But back to the playground activities—those were, as I said, summer time activities and led usually by college kids, and you could play ball and do arts and crafts and story time and all that kind of stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the playground circus?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes. Always had to come up with some act. I’m trying to remember if we didn’t do Ma and Pa Kettle or something like that at one of them as a skit with our kids to get as many of them in as we could.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned you marched behind your future husband.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you date him in high school?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, pretty much started dating, I think, in my sophomore year, and we - I - it’s just kind of sad to meet somebody at fifteen you, that you probably are going to marry because we had a long time to go, you know, of just dating. And yet we had a lot of fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall home milk deliveries?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, I’d forgotten about milk bottles. You put your milk bottles - we put empties out, our glass ones out. Yeah. Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about other home traveling salesmen or door-to-door salesmen?
MRS. MURPHY: Fuller Brush, I believe. Other than that I can’t think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned your mother, after the children got up in age, and she went to school and became a nurse.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that correct? Tell me a little bit about her work history.
MRS. MURPHY: Well -
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned earlier about it.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But elaborate a little more about it.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, she generally worked the 4-12 shift in the Emergency Room, and so that’s how I got into the babysitting more part of it and all and helping with the little brothers; but she was very calm, very cool in the Emergency Room. She said she liked to take care of people, get them fixed, and send them on; but she also was a very lovely, calm, and kind person doing this nursing, and she was good in the delivery area, the maternity floor. And she eventually went on and became a nurse in an office for Dr. Earl Eversole. But it seems to me like she was involved with the hospital even earlier because she did do Gray Lady work, and I was awfully proud of her for taking the courses and going back at her age to classes; and it was not easy at all. It was a very extensive course.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how old she was when she did that?
MRS. MURPHY: I want to say maybe later 40’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you feel having to babysitting for your younger brothers while she went to work?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t think - I mean, I think I knew it was necessary that I be around and just - It was something I needed to do. Certainly, I think I was more serious than some of the other kids. I didn’t have really much freedom to run around. I mean, I don’t mean to say that I was ever deprived of getting to date and do things. I always had time to get to do those kinds of things, but I just pretty much had some responsibilities that were hard to deal with if I had something else. But I got out for band practice and that kind of stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, in that time kids were - knew they had to be responsible and take charge sort of, is that what you’re saying?
MRS. MURPHY: I guess I thought I did, I don’t - or maybe that’s just the sort of person I might have been. I guess I just felt some responsibility for them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did - what year did you graduate from Oak Ridge High School?
MRS. MURPHY: 1958.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And after graduation, what did you do?
MRS. MURPHY: I went to Lincoln Memorial University, and my husband did, too, in Harrogate, Tennessee. Are you familiar with where it is? It is right where the Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia state lines converge, and a lot of my relatives from Middlesboro had gone there; and I’d had grandparents who had - one of them taught there, and so it was just a family-involved place that I’d always been familiar with, and that’s where I attended college.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mention your husband, at the time your future husband. Was he in the same grade that you were?
MRS. MURPHY: We - well, he was actually older than I was. He went to UT on - and played tennis; and, I don’t know, UT just didn’t seem to be his thing, and so he transferred. When I went to LMU, he transferred to LMU; and we both then ended up graduating from there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s get his name, instead of referring to him as “he.”
MRS. MURPHY: Alright. His name is John Murphy. He was a really good City of Oak Ridge tennis player. Good athlete. He’s won a lot of city tournaments.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he play tennis in high school, as well?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, and I think that his tennis team as a senior, perhaps, was the only undefeated tennis team that Oak Ridge High’s ever had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, was he a year ahead of you?
MRS. MURPHY: Two.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Two years. So, he’s graduated from high school, and were you still dating when -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was a senior?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, we were. And while he was at UT, we continued to date some; and he’d come home on weekends. I had just a few things, I went to some dances and things with people that I was friends with in high school but, primarily, continued to date him.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the classes that you took when you went to college?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I started off taking some business classes thinking I needed to get a job, and it was kind of like that sewing machine. I just didn’t have the - quite what I needed to - the taker of shorthand, which you had to do back then, and typing and all. And I quickly realized that I was fooling myself. I had coached swimming, been a playground director, babysat. Everything I’d ever done had involved children and working with children, and I don’t know where I had missed the idea that I needed to be an elementary school teacher. And so I went into that, and that was exactly what I needed to do; so, mostly, I took the regular college curriculum that you have to take, but then my classes were, primarily, for elementary education.
MR. HUNNICUTT: For people that may review this interview, tell me what shorthand is.
MRS. MURPHY: Someone is dictating to a person what they want to say, and they’re saying it out loud. The shorthand taker has learned various symbols that would represent words and letters so that you’re able, hopefully, to write those symbols down fast enough to keep up with what the person is saying. I surely was not one of those. [laughter]
MR. HUNNICUTT: Another sewing machine?
MRS. MURPHY: It sure was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, when you graduated from college, what happened then?
MRS. MURPHY: John was offered a job. No, he was - he was given a graduate fellowship to UT. LMU was just an excellent little school in the sciences, and he received a graduate fellowship at UT in certain areas of science. He had thought he was going to dental school, which he really didn’t want to do, so he went to UT; and so one us had to do some working, although he was picking up some money as a graduate assistant. And I was so fortunate to apply to Oak Ridge to teach. I don’t remember if I ever even applied anyplace else, but I did and was hired.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MRS. MURPHY: 1962.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, were you and your future husband still - future husband and -
MRS. MURPHY: We were married, because we got married while we were at LMU.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MRS. MURPHY: ’60. 1960.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where did you get married?
MRS. MURPHY: Here, at St. Stephens.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In Oak Ridge.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you applied for a teacher’s position in Oak Ridge, and did they accept your application?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, they did, and I was offered a job at the old Linden. You know, there’s a Linden Elementary School today, but the site of the old Linden was in a little bit of a different location back then. So, that was my first teaching job, and I taught fourth grade. And I taught there for a few years and then became pregnant with our second child. Our first child was born right at the end of our graduation from LMU, and I saved all my cuts from class—you could get three—to get home, have the baby, and go back to school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your first child’s name?
MRS. MURPHY: Mike. Mike Murphy. And, bless his heart, various friends of mine—I know I’m going backwards instead of forwards—but any of various friends of mine would come over and keep him while John was in class or if I were in class, so he graduated with us, kind of, about a month old. I rode to Oak Ridge from LMU with the college baseball team to go to the hospital. They were playing a game, and John was - who had been playing tennis, played - had a year of eligibility to play baseball, and he did; and they were coming here, so I rode down here with them. They had a match - I mean, a game that day, and they dropped me off and went back to school; and I had the baby and then took him back. It was quite an experience!
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ll say it was. I’ve never heard such a story. [laughter]
MRS. MURPHY: It was funny because John had no sooner gotten back to LMU after the baseball game, since I had to stay here, than my mother called and told him to come back, that the baby was going to be born. So, and this was that night, after having been let - dropped off, he came down Powell Valley from, you know - through Lafollette that way, and he had the window rolled down and was singing real loud to keep himself awake; and he got picked up by the sheriff. I don’t know whether someone had called them and said, “There’s a man drunk out here, because he’s singing real loud as he’s driving.” And he, John, explained to him what he was trying to do was to get to Oak Ridge for the birth of his first son, and the man said, “How fast do you want to go?” And he brought him to the city limits; he couldn’t come in because of jurisdiction, but anyhow - well, I didn’t need to go back into that, but that was our first child. And when I was teaching at Linden, I became pregnant again, and you didn’t teach if you were pregnant back in those days. You could not be pregnant and continue teaching. You were supposed to tell them so they’d get rid of you, I guess. So, I did have to quit at a certain point and drop out of teaching, and so I stayed out for a few years there and then went back in later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you recall about Oak Ridge Hospital? Just a little bit. Apparently, it must have been a good hospital, or you wouldn’t have wanted to come back to have your child here.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, we had four of them there, so since we were here, that’s where we went; and it was quite a, I think, a very good hospital. And I always felt like if you were going to get good care and knowledgeable help, this would be the place to be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Kind of describe your first day on the job as a school teacher in Oak Ridge. What grade was that?
MRS. MURPHY: This was fourth grade. I remember they asked me how old I was, and I said, “How old do you think I am?” And they - one said, “About 48?” and I think at 22 or however old I was I wasn’t too happy about that. But it was - it was pleasant. I knew right away this is exactly what I needed - what should be doing. I loved it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they tell you about a particular dress code that you had to -
MRS. MURPHY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Wear or anything like that?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t think so. I think it was just implied that you were supposed to come in looking as a person would who would be on a job and most any job. That - it really could be a problem sometimes, if you were an elementary school teacher, and you needed to be out on the playground and wearing, you know - looking more dressed up than, perhaps, you would today, especially with an elementary bunch of kids running around. I can remember stepping in a hole and falling. I guess I must have had on some high heeled shoes; I don’t remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the kids dress any different in your fourth grade class than when you went to the fourth grade?
MRS. MURPHY: You know, I don’t think it was that different.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you were in the setting the same as you remember in Oak Ridge school?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, yeah, it was pretty much like Elm Grove that I had attended; at the old Linden it was very much the same. You know, the schools are all kind of laid out - one or two would be laid out the same way, and another one or two would be laid out; but it didn’t seem that different from Elm Grove to me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many students did you have?
MRS. MURPHY: Probably about 23, 25.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it a mixture more girls than boys, or do you recall?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t remember that. Over the years I’ve had, you know, times I had more boys than girls and vice versa. One year I had seven boys and all - everybody else was female; it was kind of an odd situation. But one thing that was different, we had no black children because this was, of course, in the days before schools had been integrated. That happened while I was in Oak Ridge High School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s talk a little bit about that. What was your thoughts when, when you first saw the first black children come to school?
MRS. MURPHY: You know, I had not thought about that much before when I went to school, when there aren’t any black people and children around or people of any - much other ethnic background, even though I knew such people lived in Oak Ridge. But that’s the way the world was, so I didn’t think about it. After I realized what was happening, I was just really kind of distressed with myself and others, just thinking, “Is this the way it is? This shouldn’t be right.” So, when the kids came to Oak Ridge High School, I think I was a sophomore, I don’t remember that we had any big problems as some schools did. It went, probably, as smoothly as it could, but that’s primarily because there was no interaction. We were - they were there, we were there, we were all there, but it was not - we were not really a -
MR. HUNNICUTT: They did their thing?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You guys did your -
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t think anybody was unpleasant to anybody much. Yes, I know there were some incidences along the way, things I’ve been told, like in sports. I know that sometimes Oak Ridge High wouldn’t play another school because they didn’t want to play black players, and we had by that time taken - ’cause some of had become members of the football team, things like that. But I don’t remember any big deal; it was just a part of life, and that’s what shamed me. It was maybe that we ignored each other, and that seemed so wrong as I look back on it now; and I keep thinking, “What could I have done? Why did I - why didn’t I do something to be more welcoming to those kids? They must have been terrified.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that was the way the times were in those days.
MRS. MURPHY: So, we just took it as that’s what you did. I probably would have been very much out of place if I had tried to -
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’m sure we all think about that, and we could say, “Why - why didn’t I do something different?”
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, but that’s bothered me as I’ve gotten older and looked back on it from - with hindsight.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, now, let’s fast forward a little bit on up through your teaching years. Tell me about your students. What type of students have you seen over the years; and, you know, did you find some that were misbehaving? Did you find some that were fast learners, slow learners? What - give me some of your experiences related to your school children?
MRS. MURPHY: When I began teaching again after the Linden experience, and I was out for a while, and by that time I had four children; and that’s one of the reasons I went back, because somebody else had to help out money-wise in the family, Oak Ridge by that time had—well, how shall I say this—taken the black children from Oak Ridge and put them in different elementary schools, depending on where they lived. All the ones on the same street would go to the same elementary school, so that was different at first. At Glenwood I had a certain section. As - the longer I taught there, they moved to the Glenwood area and stayed there, which made it great because that was their neighborhood school then. And I only mention that because at Glenwood I had the nicest mixture of backgrounds, socio-economic levels, educational backgrounds in the families that I taught. But it was a very, very neighborhood kind of school; and it really became better as the children that were being bused in there became the neighborhood, and those kids played together. I think the diversity of that school at the time I was teaching at Glenwood was just wonderful. The kids who went to school during that time, which included my own (and this is why, I guess, I feel this way) remained friends, oh, well into their high school years; and I know at one of the graduation or reunion-type things—one of my son’s classes—all the Glenwood kids got together to have their picture made. Just as a remembrance of what their days were like. One of my children, when he went to Austin Peay University, was asked to write a remembrance of his elementary school days, and he wrote about Glenwood. And they asked if they could keep it in their learning lab, because they said every kid ought to have these kinds of elementary school experience that he had had there. Just a mixture of lives, friends, and just very typical. I had some very bright children; I had some children with problems, had some children whose families had problems. I absolutely loved it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What grades did you teach at Glenwood?
MRS. MURPHY: Fifth and then sixth.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, Glenwood School’s located where?
MRS. MURPHY: In the eastern end of Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you prepare your lessons for each day?
MRS. MURPHY: That really is time-consuming and today probably would take even more time, because you have so many things that they have to - you have to provide your lesson plans and the details and that kind of thing, and they have to be looked at. Mostly, I just wrote down every day the pages where I want to pick up and start the next day, but there was not quite as much—what should I say?—regulated, mandated. You’ve got to do this, this, and this; and you’ve got to do this kind of testing, and they have to pass this kind of - it - that was - I just don’t know that I could do that, but it was getting that way, when I finally did retire—more and more making teaching in many ways very difficult. Maybe there will be some good that will come of it, I guess; but I just had a great deal of freedom, I felt, to teach, in the way I felt, best the material that I knew I had to cover. I knew what we had - books, curriculum books - we knew what we had to cover, and then it was just up to me to take it and run with it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who was the principal at Glenwood at that time?
MRS. MURPHY: Lannis Pullham.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, as a teacher, did you feel like you were strong or weak in any subject matter, as far as teaching your children?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I felt that I was not very adequate in science. I remember once trying to make a volcano in the classroom, and it blew up and hit the ceiling and all…came down around - rained on my head. That was not my forte, and I was okay with social studies, and I could teach math; but I was more comfortable with the kids that were having trouble with math because I had, and I could understood their, you know - I could understand where they, perhaps, might be quite smart but need more time, that kind of thing. And reading was probably my strongest area for teaching because I absolutely love to read, and I read to the kids every day just as someone had read to me when I was in sixth grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was your classroom structure like it was when you went to Oak Ridge schools?
MRS. MURPHY: I think so. We were in - I was there at a period where they were having open classrooms, and people were moving around, so there was a door between my classroom and the other fifth grade classroom or the other sixth grade classroom. And the one thing it did do, I guess, was have - perhaps if there were two teachers like there would have been at Glenwood, there could be three, but we split up. We took the things that we were stronger in, and one would - teacher would teach the science or the math, and I did the reading and the language arts types things and sometimes social studies. But we worked that out so that we weren’t really teaching every subject. And I enjoyed teaching every subject, except that I felt like I gave science kind of a short shrift, since I enjoyed the other things better.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have any, I guess, rules about teaching when you taught? As the years went on, did your teaching rules change -
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: From the school administration?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes. This was the way I’d - the rule, in a way, that I have with my own children, and I kind of went to teaching with it. And this will sound so simplistic—I guess it sounds like of stupid—but I would just write the word “respect” on the board, and I said, “This is going to cover every rule that I have; you must be respectful of each other, of the school itself and its property, of me, of your – the materials, the desks, and the equipment in the school, and you absolutely must retain that respect. You don’t - do not have to like the person next you, you don’t have to be their best friend; but you will be respectful to them.” It worked for me; now, it might not for somebody else. With my own children it was kind of the same way. “Call home if you’re going to be late, and other than that, we just expect you to behave yourself.” And pretty much they did. Now—I don’t know—Matt, my youngest son, would - was so nice. He’d call and say, “I’m going to be late getting home. I’m over at such and such.” Well, I don’t know where he was, but he called me, you know; and I knew he was all right. So, I just - I felt like if I treated the kids respectfully, they would begin to get the idea; and I just did not tolerate any type of bullying or put-downs or anything like that. I couldn’t save the whole class. I always had a homeroom class. I couldn’t save them outside my door, but that was something they knew they just would - they really would get in trouble. I tried not to send kids to the office, and when I got - that was in elementary school; I pretty much handled it myself. I wanted it not to be like, “Wait till your daddy gets home,” you know, but I just tried to handle everything that I could. And it worked. Now, in junior high I was continuing not to send kids to the office, ’cause I could generally get it worked out. That wasn’t so good because I found out that they needed to keep a more accurate record of any type of behavior so that they could pull out a folder if they had a parent conference or something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about homework? Did you believe in a lot of homework for your students?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I really didn’t believe in it. When I was in elementary school we would have some, and the same in junior high. Most - I had it - I gave - I gave homework every night but much more for the purposes of: Take this home. What do you need to take home tonight? What do you need to do? How long will it take you to do it? What do you need to bring back? And then, so that parents could see, but it would not take any kid very long to do it. It might be looking over some spelling words or doing some kind of vocabulary thing, but I didn’t pile it on at night. I felt like the kids that I taught, particularly when we were in middle school and they didn’t get recess, needed to play basketball and get on a bike and just run around. I thought some kids needed to go home and play and then come to homework, and other kids needed to go home and do their homework and then go out and play; but either way I wanted them to have time. We all had to let down sometimes, and the pressure was really on, though, as I continued teaching in the kinds of schools to give homework, to grade it, and to return it promptly. And that was very difficult to do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you go to - was it Jefferson Junior High you -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Taught in? Where was that located?
MRS. MURPHY: At - it was on, the new building, where it is today, over off of Fairbanks Road, but I’ve forgotten the year that that was built. It still looks very nice and is very well-kept. It, at the time that I came into it, was seventh, eighth, and ninth. Well, at some point while—I think my husband was on school board then—they had to reconfigure the grades in order to get the best use of space. So, the sixth grade was going to enter the junior high and become a middle school, eventually. Sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth was not a - to me a happy combination. The sixth graders were quite a far cry from having anything in common with the ninth graders, but it worked because that school really worked so hard to try to make us welcome and help us to fit in. But after that, the ninth grade eventually moved on up, and it was a better configuration with sixth, seventh and eighth. Then the fifth grade—same thing; for space they built on to Jefferson and moved the fifth grade up into the junior high, and they were very protected and very nurtured like you would in an elementary school. But - and it worked fine, I think, because we all tried to make that happen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: As a teacher did you find in junior high that the type of teaching had changed than it was in the elementary school?
MRS. MURPHY: It was really, really hard the first few years. We didn’t know whether we were elementary school teachers or whether we were secondary school teachers; and the school system would have these in-services and all sorts of these extra things you had to attend, and we were kind of getting it from both ends, from elementary topics and sessions and seminars and workshops and also from the secondary. We didn’t really know what we were, and when we went in there it was Jefferson Junior High school. When the term changed to middle school, that kind of began to be a different type of set-up, organization of the school. Our principal at the time, when we first went in there, was running the school very much like you would a secondary school. You know, you sat in your rows in your desk, and you took notes, and you did all the things you might do in a class - as you would in high school. He was kind of shocked, I think, when he came down the hall when we all had moved over there; and we had little groupings of kids and all, because that was not necessarily the way a junior high school was structured. Over the years he was so good at really trying to, you know, take in what we were used to. We just had a hard time trying to define what were we. Well, we were elementary school teachers, so we were used to teaching all things often, or at least most of the things, to a homeroom class or at the most two groups; we would switch them back and forth. But we were responsible for everything. I knew those kids very well because I had them all day. When we got to junior high, we thought we had to change classes just like the rest of the junior high was doing, so we were shuffling kids in and out the door for every period for a different subject. It was really, really hard for them and for us to try to prepare that many subjects but every period with a different group of kids.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who was the principal?
MRS. MURPHY: Robert Moss, the most wonderful principal, and he really tried to, you know, to get the right balance there; but I found myself really disoriented because - I mentioned the ways that I felt rules should be and the ways that - the expectations that I’d had and discipline, even. All were based on my relationship with them and their relationship with me. Well, if you only had a kid for 50 minutes, you didn’t get much of a relationship. If I’d had them all day, sooner or later they’d say, “Okay, I give in. The old girl’s going to keep pestering me until I, you know, behave like she wants me to.” And that wasn’t true when you just had them for a little period of time, and the bell rang, and up they popped, and out the door they went. I had no nurturing to do. It was very hard. It took a while, and we eventually broke into teams so that we didn’t have that many children; and we also broke into specialties of this is what we’ll teach, and I, primarily, had the reading and language arts.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned your husband was on the school board. That brings up the question…did you have any conflict of interests, since he was on the school board, and you were a teacher?
MRS. MURPHY: You know, I expected that to come up quite a bit. I’m sure that there were people that felt that way or thought that that - we managed to get through it. There were times that I felt uncomfortable, but he didn’t. I don’t think he ever did. But once I kind of chastised him for not raising the teachers’ salary and told him he could sleep on the couch, and I took his pillow in there and told him he could just sleep in there. That’s about - and that really wasn’t very good of me, but primarily, we just found that our best bet was just -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Teachers didn’t get a raise after that?
MRS. MURPHY: No, not much, but I just really tried to be ignorant of all the things that he might be doing with the school board.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you see from the discipline standpoint from the time you first, say, started in - at Jefferson till the time you retired? How had that changed, or did it change?
MRS. MURPHY: This is one of the times I will sound so either deaf or dumb or looking through rose colored glasses. The kids - they need - wanted the same things. They wanted me to trust them and respect them and to act like I was glad to see them, glad to be there. I wanted them to be glad to be there, glad to be in my class, have respect for me; and I felt, often, as long as we could keep this kind of mutual, “I know what she wants me to do, and I know what they want me to do,” we managed fine, so I really think the kids’ needs were the same. The world became very different. I was so aware of that so many times. I used to refer to television shows, or I might say a line from a commercial; and they could all repeat part of it, which sounds like a silly thing, but back in those days there were only a few channels. Now, there are ten million channels. We didn’t have any common cultural things, because the world just suddenly kind of, it seems to me, exploded! I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but I remember one time I - we were reading a book, and I said, you know, it was about a deputy sheriff, and I said something, “Whenever I read this book or whenever we read this book aloud”—it was a book I’d used several years—“this character reminds me of Barney Fife.” And they said, “Well, who’s that?” And I just felt really sad. At that - I realized how I had not moved with the times. Another time, I - at the beginning of the year, I always use these old 45 records with my kids and put the names of the new students and something like, “You’re - you’ll be a hit,” or something stupid like that. I began to realize they didn’t have 45s; they didn’t know what they were, so things changed. The world changed very much during this time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: As a teacher you had to change with the times?
MRS. MURPHY: I certainly did, and the pressures that the kids had and to - I hope I’m not just jumping around, but this is just such a big topic to me. I can remember when I had kids that had problems at home, and I knew it, I always wanted to work with them and protect them. And I did in what ways I could. I began to realize that my best bet with them was to have school be a safe place and expect them to do the work and for us to work through it no matter what bad things had gone on in their life or mine and just attend to that, and it could almost be a refuge in a sense if I just continued to do things without accommodating any more than I had to. And I mean, what I guess I’m saying, I couldn’t think, “Oh, bless your heart; I know you’ve had a hard time,” even though I did feel that way a lot of times, but we just would go along with business as usual. Too many stresses.
MR. HUNNICUTT: From a parent’s standpoint it’s probably very difficult to understand how a teacher - what a teacher really has to know to be a teacher. Not just the subjects, but the compassion and the psychology from it -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And everything you deal with from the day to day activities.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I admire teachers because they have a hard job. Sure do. When you were teaching, who took care of your children?
MRS. MURPHY: That was really hard because I did go back when the younger two were very young, and one was an aunt, who took care of them for a bit, and one was a neighbor who had children the same age as mine. And it just was wild for a while - and then to come home and have four kids. And by then some of my older kids were getting in junior high, and they would play on every sports team; and I’d have to load up the younger ones, who were crying because they couldn’t watch Gilligan’s Island while we went to pick up the older ones at Jefferson. I think my car automatically drove to Jefferson to pick up whoever was practicing after school. It was a crazy time. I graded papers with kids sitting on my lap at night, ’cause I hadn’t seen them all day. We let them stay up later, which was not a good parenting or mother thing; but I hadn’t seen them, so I pretty much let them stay up and fall asleep when -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you feel like you were a big help to them as far as helping them with their homework or questions they had?
MRS. MURPHY: No, I think they had to get stuff on their own. I’ve sometimes felt, “Gee, I’m being neglectful.” My own children went to the school where I was teaching, so that was kind of hard for them at times, I’m sure. But we managed okay, for the most part.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is it ever a case that you would teach your own child, or do they prevent that from happening?
MRS. MURPHY: I did, because at Glenwood there were only two teachers per grade. So, yes, I did have them, and they -we got through that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have to kind of talk to them beforehand and let them know that you were the teacher, not the mother, at that particular point?
MRS. MURPHY: No, they just didn’t push it, and they didn’t really want to be connected, you know, necessarily with me in school; and I tried to not make it difficult or uncomfortable for them. It was further emphasized, I guess, when their dad was on the school board and their mother was a teacher. But they did okay. You know, they just stayed pretty much who they were and made good grades and not some good grades and that kind of stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All your children go through the Oak Ridge schools?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, um-hmm.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where are they today?
MRS. MURPHY: Our oldest son Mike is a teacher at Jefferson Middle School—teaches science—and he’s been the basketball coach, up until about a year ago, for quite a while; and he asked my husband to be his assistant, so we kind of were back into the coaching/teaching things for a while. Mike had taught at Bearden Middle School before he came back - out to Oak Ridge. It had always been his dream to teach here. Melinda is a historic preservation person in Decatur, Alabama. She had to do an internship while she was a senior at Middle Tennessee State, and she stayed on there since she was right out of college. That’s a really interesting job. Not much money, but an interesting job. Marcia is a - teaches part time at the Episcopal school in Knoxville. And Matt is an elementary school principal in Clinton at North Clinton.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Outside the school you mentioned church. Are you heavily involved in your church?
MRS. MURPHY: More so now than I was, you know, when I was teaching. The last thing on God’s green earth I thought I’d ever do is teach Sunday school after I got through teaching school. I - after I retired somebody asked if I would, and I thought, “Would you dare ask me to teach Sunday school?” And I got to thinking about it. I have been so blessed to be allowed to have this kind of teaching career that I loved. I absolutely loved it, and it’s probably time that I tried to do it and give back something in some - an area at least I had some experience. So, yes, I teach Sunday school; and my husband and I do some different things around the church. We’re probably not as heavily involved as other people, but we sure have been involved with kids in the town, you know, through - my husband’s coached every sport there’s been in Oak Ridge over the years, and - but between the two of us, we feel like we’ve done activities with places where we could be of benefit and, perhaps, experiences that we’ve had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many years were you a teacher?
MRS. MURPHY: Thirty four.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you’ve got a unique situation, and you went through the Oak Ridge school system.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You went to college; you came back as an Oak Ridge school teacher.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you retired as a school teacher.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That seems to be - to me to be maybe to be the one and only person I’ve ever heard of to have that experience. Is - how do you think about it?
MRS. MURPHY: As near as I can tell, I may be. I know there probably - have certainly been some since then; but at the time when I entered kindergarten in 1945, and if you count up the years, you have 12, actually 13, years of school from starting with kindergarten and then 12 years of school till your graduation; then you go away to school, to college, for four years, at that point Oak Ridge had been here long enough for somebody to do that, and that would have been by graduating in 1958 and then having four years of college. So, if I wasn’t the first person hired back, I sure had to be among the first ones.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you feel safe the whole time you were living in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why?
MRS. MURPHY: As I told the kids in my classes, it was like living in a giant playpen. You were pretty much in it; the bad guys were on the outside of it because most of the people that were inside had been cleared by the FBI and others to be a person that, as far as they could tell, would not be harmful. I don’t know; that - maybe that was a false sense of security because I don’t know how they were cleared, but at any rate we all had the run of the town.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How do you think the city has progressed over the years?
MRS. MURPHY: That’s a really hard question. When I went away to LMU, which was a very small college, after having gone to a very large high school and gone through school system that had just every advantage that you could wish that you could have, I began to realize when I got to LMU how smug an attitude we had in Oak Ridge. We just took for granted, you know, this is - this is - we’re the best, and we got all this stuff; and I’m sure we were viewed by people around us as just being obnoxious, possibly, or thinking we were better than others, ’cause we really did have better sports teams and music departments and schools and school teachers and - to some extent. And we’ve gone through some hard times in Oak Ridge just like other towns all around us. But that really caught me up short—realizing an attitude that I didn’t like when I thought about it, and I was feeling guilty of it myself. I could remember even in college a teacher would ask where I was from or something, and I would say, “Oak Ridge.” “Oh, well, you’re from Oak Ridge; no wonder, you know, you might - you all got… ” It was not a put-down, exactly, but a recognition that we had more things here than other people, and now I see Oak Ridge as just a regular town with many of the same kinds of problems that other places have—perhaps less, even though that’s hard to believe sometime in criminal activities and things. But I still think there’s an expectation here that we’re supposed to do stuff, that we’re supposed to do it well; and that means, you know, when you’re at Oak Ridge High School and you win some national science award, as I saw some kids did just recently—won it again, the Siemens Award, that’s just what you do here. There’s an expectation. The funds may not be there like they used to be, the government providing everything is not there like it once was when I - we were little; but I still think, overall, most parents want their children to really have the best, and they’re willing to back it up and do what they can to make it happen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything else that you’d like to talk about that we haven’t talked about?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’m trying to brag on myself, because I really don’t - I’m not telling this for this reason - that reason. When I retired I received an award from - it was for the Retired Teachers of Tennessee Hall of Fame. I have no idea how I was asked or selected for that. It was a shock to my system, but what I realized when I went to the awards ceremony, it was in Nashville the next year after I retired, what I really was receiving was an award for all the teachers who had come to Oak Ridge not knowing where in the world they were coming to, you know, going to be going during the war years and all; I was just their product. Do you understand what I mean?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MURPHY: The very teachers that had been recruited from all over the place, as I understood Dr. Blankenship did…went around and recruited who he thought would be really strong teachers, those were the ones that I had, so I was their product; and I got to continue their work because I had learned from them. And so I just represented them in that area, and I hope you understand that I’m not - I think I was just continuing as a teacher to try to be good like I wanted to be, like some of the teachers I’d had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, it’s been my pleasure to interview you. I’ve learned a lot from this interview. I didn’t realize to some degree how much a teacher had to go through to teach kids in today’s society, but I’m sure that this oral interview will be a very, very good addition to the Oak Ridge history. And when someone in the future decides they wanting to look at - listen to your interview, they’re going to learn a whole lot about the Oak Ridge school system and your life.
MRS. MURPHY: I so appreciate this opportunity. I’ve had this feeling, this need that I’ve got to say this sometime so that people will know the background of what it was like to grow up here and to go to school here, and I really appreciate having this opportunity. Thank you for your kindness and your making this a really pleasant interview.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, thank you for your time.
[End of Interview]
[Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited at Mrs. Murphy’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]

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ORAL HISTORY OF MARY LOU MURPHY
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
November 29, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is November 29, 2012. I am Don Honeycutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC, 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Mrs. Mary Lou Murphy about living in Oak Ridge. May I call you Mary Lou?
MRS. MURPHY: Please do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Please state your full name, date of birth, and place of birth, please.
MRS. MURPHY: Mary Louise Sewell Murphy. August 20, 1940. Middlesboro, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mary Lou, what was your father’s name and the place of birth and date?
MRS. MURPHY: Bill Sewell. Barbourville, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the date?
MRS. MURPHY: It’s November the 9th, and I - I know I’ll say the wrong year, but it was in the 20’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s name, maiden name before she was married?
MRS. MURPHY: Gordon. Frances Louise Gordon Sewell.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And her birthdate?
MRS. MURPHY: She was July the 29th and, again, I have to stop and count back. I know she’s - was 19 years old when I was born. So, I can figure it out that way when I can’t remember the year.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the place of birth?
MRS. MURPHY: Middlesboro, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s school history? Do you recall what his school history was?
MRS. MURPHY: He went to Middlesboro High School and graduated from that; and over the years he took a few college courses here and there, but he did not have a degree.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s school history?
MRS. MURPHY: My mother graduated from Middlesboro High School; and then, when she was living in Oak Ridge, she decided to take a licensed practical nursing course, and she graduated from that. She worked in the Oak Ridge Hospital in the Emergency Room and the Delivery Room and also as Dr. Eversole, the surgeon’s nurse.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about sisters and brothers?
MRS. MURPHY: I have three brothers. Bill - he’s about three years younger than I am, and he also graduated from Oak Ridge High School and was - in his adult life he served as the Director of Recreation after Mr. Yearwood, who had been the longtime director, died. And then I have a brother named Frank, who worked for the county and dealing with all sorts of waste collections and that kind of thing. He worked there for many years and has a similar position in Knoxville about recycling. And then I have a brother Joe, who works at the plant as electrician.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall their places of birth?
MRS. MURPHY: All in Oak Ridge. No, no, I’m sorry. The two younger ones were in Oak Ridge, and my older brother - the oldest brother was in Ravenna, Ohio; and we must have come here not too long after he was born.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of work did your father do before Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: He pretty much always has been an electrician.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work?
MRS. MURPHY: Not really until she began to do the nursing things, and, yes, and then she did work at the hospital, the Oak Ridge Hospital, in the departments that I mentioned.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But before Oak Ridge she didn’t work?
MRS. MURPHY: Uh-huh.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why your father came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t really know. I think that he just realized this was a job, and he could – he was able to get offered a job; and all I know is here we came.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was your mother and father’s first home?
MRS. MURPHY: In Middlesboro, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And they were in Middlesboro at the time -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, um-hum.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That they came to Oak Ridge? How many, or how did they get to Oak Ridge? You mentioned your older brother Bill came. Do you recall how they came? By car or -
MRS. MURPHY: You know I tried to think of that when I knew this was going to be coming up, and I don’t have the slightest recollection, because we didn’t have a car when we came. I don’t remember moving here, how we got here; but at the first time that we moved here, we did not have a car. So, someone must have driven a truck or helped us to move some furniture.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall your parents talking about when they first came to Oak Ridge? Anything about the - how they - what they saw when they got here?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I just know what I can remember, and it was just the way we grew up with the streets being pretty muddy and the yards muddy and the boardwalks and all; and yet one thing that I remember, we - our first house was on Malvern Road off of Michigan, and there were people on that street that had various kinds of jobs in Oak Ridge, everything from - well, my dad being an electrician, and then I know one of the top scientists lived on that street and other jobs in between but primarily all connected to the work that was being done at the plant, about which we knew nothing. But the neatest thing was that the neighbors - it was like they became your family because none of us had family here, and so it was a wonderful place to live, even with all the hardships of the mud and the deprivations of things that you couldn’t get during the war. But, still, it was a good place. I remember that the people next door I called Aunt Lily and Uncle Claude for the rest of their lives and just because that’s more or less what they became while we lived in that environment of starting something so new.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old were you when you remember -
MRS. MURPHY: Well -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Anything in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: I’m saying four to five. Some of the memories seem pretty vivid in my mind, and mostly I just have this feeling of things being built a lot, of walking a lot of places. For example, we would walk across Michigan Avenue and cut down through the woods to go to Jackson Square, which was where we would get our groceries. I - It seems to me like there was something going all the time—buses were running, people were working at all hours of the nights - night and day.
MR. HUNNICUTT: With that many people here in Oak Ridge there was a lot of busy activity going on.
MRS. MURPHY: It seemed like it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did - when did you - your family have a car? Do you recall?
MRS. MURPHY: We didn’t have one that first part of our living here. I don’t know that - if I’ve made this clear, but we came in about 1944-45, right along in there. And then when my dad’s job ended, we moved back to Middlesboro; and we then came back to Oak Ridge just a few years later when he was hired on again. At that time we had a truck, and that’s how we got to Oak Ridge the second time, and we did have that truck. But, honestly, it seemed to me like I rode the bus everywhere, as did my mother and my brothers, while my dad had the truck.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you recall your mother going to Jackson Square to grocery shop?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you went with her, obviously? Did - were your other brothers born at that time?
MRS. MURPHY: No, just Bill, who was three years younger than I was. And then we - the two other younger brothers were born during our second stay in Oak Ridge, and that’s when we had the truck. And we lived on California Avenue then, which is kind of funny because I guess I was about almost ten when we came back—nine going on ten—we’d been away about three years, and now I still live right off of California Avenue, just a few houses up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: If you can, describe how it would be to go grocery shopping with your mother, and she had two small children, and you had to walk to the grocery store and had to carry the groceries. Kind of describe that for me.
MRS. MURPHY: I have no idea how on earth my mother did that because we were going down through a path in the woods. She must have had Billy in a stroller is the only thing I can think of. I can just remember walking with her. Seems to me like we had on rubber boots all the time—those big, old, ugly, brown galoshes-like things—which everybody had and had to have. I don’t know how we got back home with the groceries, but then, again, you didn’t go down and get a whole bunch of stuff. You got what few things - you had the ration book kinds of things, so you could get just a few items. That’s something else I kind of remember. The neighbors that I mentioned on that street - it seemed to me like we traded out an awful lot of things, like eggs or sugar or whatever. If somebody was going to have a birthday but didn’t have all the ingredients for a cake, someone might be able to trade or give you or loan - or loan you or whatever the ingredients to make that cake. But we must not have been carrying back a whole lot of stuff. We didn’t live that far from Jackson Square, but it still would have been a hard walk with two small children and groceries.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, the neighborhood activity was like a little close network of -
MRS. MURPHY: Neigh -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Family members, but yet you wasn’t family members.
MRS. MURPHY: Right, and certainly there were people on that street that I can’t - don’t remember much about, but I just remember this sense of if you needed help, you were probably going to get it from anybody in the neighborhood.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about how your mother washed her clothes?
MRS. MURPHY: That one that I remember may be more when we came back to Oak Ridge; but it was one of those things that had the rollers in it, and you squeezed the clothes up through it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A ringer-type washer?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, yeah. Now that’s the one that I remember. I don’t know what we had earlier. Obviously, we washed somehow, but I do remember washboards; and she’d have this awful, brown soap-like stuff, and she’d do it on the washboard and then always, of course, hanging things out to dry.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you - do you recall that at the clothesline - that when your mother hung clothes out or went and retrieved her clothes that that’s where a lot of people gathered to have conversations, or, you know, the ladies talked at the clotheslines? Do you recall that?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t recall that, but I’m sure it’s true. I guess it would be where you had your clothesline in relationship to the person next door, perhaps.
MR. HUNNICUTT: This first house that you lived in off of Michigan, do you recall how the house - describe how the house was.
MRS. MURPHY: It was an A house, which is a very small house, which was alright at the time. My brother and I shared a bedroom. I’ve lived in an A, B, C, D, E; and I think the one that I didn’t live in was an F, which were kind of hard to get, and I don’t think there were very many of them. I always thought the highlight would be to have a D house, and we’ve got one that a family owned that also had four children before us; and so it’s pretty well worn out by now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what type of heat was in the A house?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, it was that thing where you - the coal men came by and gave you coal every so often, and I just took that for granted that that’s the way life was; but as I think back on it—my gosh!—here you are in this house, and you’ve got your walls painted, and you’ve got your coal coming in, and - it just - it was an odd experience. Didn’t seem strange to me at the time, but I can remember the coalman day. The dogs would bark and lot of noise and coal dust, and they’d shovel it in through this little door into your utility room, which a lot of people changed over into eating areas and things later, since it’s attached to the kitchen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of chores did you have to do as a child?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I expect I was supposed to pick up after myself and that kind of thing as a small child, but when my younger brothers were born, really I just did a lot of babysitting types of things and, especially, when my mother was working at the hospital. My dad did - sometimes he would do electrical work outside of working at the plant, so I was it; and really from maybe junior high on through high school I did a lot of, essentially, mothering, because they were little, little guys and just a few months apart.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned earlier that the family left Oak Ridge and came back. How old were you when the family left?
MRS. MURPHY: Okay, I remember going through kindergarten and Oak Ridge - in Oak Ridge, as well as first grade. And right at the end of that first grade year we went back to Kentucky, and then I began second grade. Third grade and fourth grade were also attended in Kentucky. We came back as I started fifth grade, so I’d say we were away about three years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the first school in Oak Ridge you attended?
MRS. MURPHY: Pine Valley.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And kind of describe a typical day at Pine Valley School that you can remember.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, again, probably mud, wearing these brown, ugly shoes and brown galoshes. Everybody had on undershirts underneath their clothes. But I just remember enjoying school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you walk to school?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, and that was something else I remember. The kids on our street pretty much walked together down a boardwalk at the end of Malvern, through the woods. Now, can you imagine a five year old going through the woods to Pine Valley? The neatest things happened to me, though, one time. I know I digress; but I was looking through a catalog of school films for the Oak Ridge schools, and I saw one that said, “Oak Ridge Schools, 1940-something or the other.” And I thought, “Goodnight, I - that’s about when I started school!” And so I got this, checked it out, and one day showed it to my class. I’d been trying to tell them what it was like to grow up here, and all of a sudden there was my mother in the film having a conference with my first grade teacher about me. And I don’t know what I’d done or whether it was just a regular conference kind of thing. But it was just the most surprising film - having her in it, but then seeing the rest of the film because it pretty well covered Oak Ridge for a few years. Had no sound, and it was all just glimpses of things that the Oak Ridge schools were doing and had that probably very, very few schools had, like music and art classes and phys. ed. classes and health care and nurses checking on you. And out on the playground we had good equipment, and there’s one of my kindergarten class raising the flag outside; it was included in that film. And the only reason I knew it was my kindergarten class is because I had some still photos that were taken that day of the same event.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember your teachers’ names?
MRS. MURPHY: One was Miss Fig. That was in kindergarten, and the other was Miss Jacoby in first grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall that all the kids, of course, they came from different backgrounds or parents did, did everybody kind of just blend together and be buddies and pals?
MRS. MURPHY: I guess that’s how I remember it. I don’t - I was awfully young at the time. I could think more about when I went - came back in fifth grade, and even then we were close. We would - in my sixth grade year I remember we would all go to Jackson Square on the weekends and go to the movies, hold hands. You know, we thought we were really big by then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, we’ll come back to when you came back to Oak Ridge.
MRS. MURPHY: Alright.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about the school years in Kentucky when you left.
MRS. MURPHY: It’s kind of a blur as far as school. It was a very, very old school. In fact, some of my aunts and uncles and grandparents even may have gone to school there, but it was one of those where the desks were attached—you know, the wooden desks with the iron sides, and there would be a seat which would fold up attached to the seat behind you; and you had a little ink well, but they were, you know, bolted to the floor—that kind of very, very old type of desk, school. It was rigid in many ways in terms of movement around, and everything was pretty much this teacher standing in front and the class would be out here. But I think they learned. I know they did. In fact, I thought when I got there, “Golly, I hope I can catch up; I’m not sure I know some of this stuff.” I don’t think it was any harder or any easier; it was just a different way of learning than in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of dress, clothing did you wear when you went to - that you can remember up through the fourth grade?
MRS. MURPHY: Dresses. We always had to wear dresses. I don’t remember ever having on pants. I can’t imagine going around in a dress all the time, but I did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when you left Oak Ridge you left the mud, and you left the galoshes behind.
MRS. MURPHY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what type of shoes did you wear?
MRS. MURPHY: I wanted some pretty, black, ballet-looking shoes; but I still had the old, brown, ugly things and the undershirts. And I wanted white boots or red boots so I could look like a majorette, but I still had the good old brown ones.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when your family moved back to Oak Ridge, why did they come back?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, job, again. It was a really good opportunity for my dad to come and be hired back on. I think probably the hiring was from a different contractor at that time; but it was the electrical work, and he worked in various places.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember who the contractor was when he first come to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I want to say Eastman, Tennessee Eastman? I meant to look that up before I came down here, because I have a picture of him working on some lights out at the plant, but that’s who I -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember which plant he worked at?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I think he must have been at Y-12 when we were here earlier. I do think he was - I know he ended up, I believe, at Oak Ridge National Lab, but he worked all over - was moved around to many different areas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you went through the third - second, third, and fourth grade in Kentucky. You moved back to Oak Ridge –
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: To start the fifth grade. And by that time was the mud still as bad, or was it gone by then?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t remember that there was any problem then. I came back to go to Elm Grove School and started in fifth grade there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did the family live?
MRS. MURPHY: On California Avenue, at the very top, and we then moved. As our family got a little bit bigger we moved; but, primarily, we lived in the eastern part of the city.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of house on California was it?
MRS. MURPHY: It was another A. Then when Frank and Joe were born, we were desperate, so we moved into, I believe, a C, which was on Everest Circle not too far from where we were living.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, tell me about Elm Grove School, how it was different from the school in Kentucky.
MRS. MURPHY: I think, just the very environment was so much more - well, I don’t know whether “relaxed” is the word, exactly, but learning was different. You might be called up in groups, and you had tables and chairs that could be organized differently in the room. You weren’t bolted to the floor with the kind of desk. So you had more informal grouping and maybe based on your ability to do math or to do reading. And I’m kind of thinking in Middlesboro that there would be a whole class of those who were, perhaps, better students; and then the other class would be those who were not as good. But in Oak Ridge it was kind of all mixed; and yet you were, perhaps, grouped and could walk up and join another group, depending on what the subject was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were in Middlesboro, what type of classes did you have that was different than Oak Ridge, or was there?
MRS. MURPHY: It was all in the same room. I mean, if you had any music at all, it would be because the elementary school teacher that you had might lead you in some singing or would ask you to do some sort of artwork, but there were no special classes at all. And that’s the thing that, I think, that was so different. I mean, you know, we went to phys. ed. and had teachers, and we went to music and had teachers and art and had teachers and library. There was a librarian who acted as a teacher about library skills. And there just seemed to be so much more movement and involvement with different teachers and different types of subjects, and everyone got to do them. And that was within the school itself. I still remember Elm Grove vividly for the kinds of things that went on there also after school, but I believe those must have been city-sponsored activities; but, you know, I can talk about that at some -
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, during the classroom activities or during the school day itself, you were able to move out of those classroom and go to other places when you came back to Oak Ridge because you had gym in the gym -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And things of that nature. So, in Kentucky it was pretty much combined -
MRS. MURPHY: Rigid.
MR. HUNNICUTT: To one room, and if the teacher didn’t have any musical background, you didn’t -
MRS. MURPHY: Absolutely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Have music, but if she had art background, you had art, so -
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall who your teacher was at Elm Grove?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, her name was Effie Gee, and she scared the peewadden out of me when I came back. I can’t tell you why, but she was really somebody that I was scared of, and I don’t know why.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, do you remember the ages of your teachers in Kentucky versus the ages of teachers in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: The ones in Kentucky seemed very, very old; and then when I was just about to go into fifth grade there and came back here, I would have had a younger, much younger teacher. They seemed to have been permanent at that school forever. In fact, I know that many of my aunts and uncles had had some of the teachers that I was also having. Effie was also a little bit older; I began to appreciate her more as I - I guess maybe I was just nervous about having moved and being the new person and wanting to behave and not get in any trouble. And then I had Fern Dewer in sixth grade. She was a marvelous teacher in that she read to us every day after lunch, and I think I went to school, primarily, happily every day because of her reading to us, and I -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you visit the library very much?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes. I loved it! That was something we didn’t have in Middlesboro. We had a town library, and I visited it all the time; but we didn’t have a school library.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you visited the library, did the librarian read to you; or did she teach you how to look up books? How was that atmosphere?
MRS. MURPHY: Probably both. I just remember learning some library skills in there, but also being read to, which I loved. And I later became a reading teacher, so maybe that’s where some of it started.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, at recess time going to Elm Grove, what did you do outside at recess?
MRS. MURPHY: We played an awful lot of games, kind of organized in a way. You could go up and play on the swings and slides and things like that, but it seemed to me at Elm Grove we pretty much - if we went outside, there would be some kind of directed game. Maybe the teacher would start it; you didn’t have to play it, I don’t think, but seemed like we played together an awful lot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like school?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I was fine with it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you were a good student about going to school?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you walk to school at Elm Grove?
MRS. MURPHY: No, that was wonderful also, in that there was a bus that came by and you had a - I think I had a bus badge that you wore when you got on the bus that meant you - I don’t know whether we - I don’t think we paid anything for it or bus tickets later. But the bus would take you to school, bring you home for lunch, if you can imagine, go back out and catch the bus back down to school, and then come home at the end of the day.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall whether Elm Grove had a cafeteria at that time?
MRS. MURPHY: They didn’t at that time. I know they added one on later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you know or - where did you go to catch the bus when you went to school? And tell me about getting on the bus to come back home.
MRS. MURPHY: Okay. If - when we went to - when I went to Elm Grove, there was a telephone pole a few yards up the road, not quite in front of my house, but all the kids would gather at that telephone pole to catch the bus—those that were going to school—and that’s about where we were let off, kind of a central telephone pole; but, you know, all you had to do was cross a yard or two, and you were back home. At school I remember being let out by the teacher kind of in a line to board the buses. It wasn’t just, “Good-bye, everybody; run down the hall and go home.” It was organized, which was, of course, “Be good in getting on buses.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did you know which bus to get on in the afternoon?
MRS. MURPHY: I have no idea. [laughter] In the film that I mentioned of Oak Ridge schools in their early days that I had the pleasure of seeing, there was a man in it at Elm Grove, a policeman directing traffic. He looked just like Barney Fife. Couldn’t believe it, but he must have been of help after school in getting us in the right bus or direction.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that photograph where he’s helping kids across Tennessee Avenue?
MRS. MURPHY: I think it is. Do you know -
MR. HUNNICUTT: That little shopping center?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, I’m familiar with that photograph.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall safety patrols in school?
MRS. MURPHY: Oh, yes. I think I was a safety patrol, and that was such a big deal. You watched people to be sure they weren’t running or skipping steps, and you’d make them go back if they did. That was a big deal in fifth and sixth grade. I think I went on a safety patrol trip sometime to go to Nashville. I don’t know why I can’t remember much about it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, how did you become a safety patrol?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t really know if that - it was taking turns or something, perhaps, or maybe you had to present yourself as a good citizen for a lengthy time before you would be, maybe, selected to have a turn. I know it probably alternated, ’cause everybody wanted to be one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, I’m a student in school. How do I know you’re safety patrol?
MRS. MURPHY: I had a white belt on. Came across like this, came around your waist, clicked together; and it had a real shiny badge on it that said “Safety Patrol.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, your job was to keep the kids kind of in line in school. Did you help after school, as well?
MRS. MURPHY: I think I must have gone out early, before the bell rang, and stood at the stairs; but I don’t know how I got on the bus afterwards if they, you know - I don’t think they went ahead without me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, they’d let the safety patrol on the bus.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I guess so. I -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Hold the bus till the safety patrol got there.
MRS. MURPHY: I guess they did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: After the sixth grade you went to junior high?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where was junior high school located?
MRS. MURPHY: It was above Blankenship Field, and it had been the high school, apparently, during the years that I was younger; and that’s where the high school was - classes were held. And then it was used as Jefferson Junior High School, and I went seventh and eighth grade there, which is funny. That configuration of ages has changed so many times. My brother ended up going sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth there; but I was only there for seventh and eighth.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you notice different right off of the attending Jefferson than Elm Grove?
MRS. MURPHY: No recesses that I remember. I think we might have gone outside as a part of a gym class. Then we - I remember having to take Home Ec., which I was just horrible at. One of my Home Ec. teachers wrote on my report card, “Mary Lou is just a really nice little girl, but I am convinced she will never be able to operate a sewing machine.” [laughter]
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, how true was that statement?
MRS. MURPHY: It was absolutely true; I couldn’t even get mad or be upset. It was the gospel truth. I never did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about Phys. Ed., Physical Education classes? How different were they than Elm Grove?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, if you are familiar with Oak Ridge history, there was a man named Nick Orlando, who was the gym teacher on the boys’ side; and then we had the girls’ side, and we had a curtain that they pulled across the gym floor, so you had to be on your own side. But Nick somehow managed to entertain both sides occasionally. But it was serious stuff. You had to do exercises, and you had to have the white shorts and the white shirts and that kind of stuff; but it was a class.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the gym teacher’s name?
MRS. MURPHY: I think, at least part of the time, it was Bobbe Smith, a long time Oak Ridger. And I’m getting confused, but there was a John Teague?
MR. HUNNICUTT: John?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I don’t remember whether I had him or whether he was just around at the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was a shop teacher -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: For many years.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes. And he also lived on California Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, this curtain they pulled across the center of the gym…Was that just so that the girls or the boys wouldn’t aggravate the girls, or they wouldn’t - the boys wouldn’t be distracted and watch the girls, or why do you think they did that?
MRS. MURPHY: I think they thought that we would be better off not to be checking each other out, and I’d guess that that was the period in life where you did begin to check each other out; and some of us didn’t look so hot - didn’t want to be embarrassed by our sports ability or lack of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you required to take showers after gym class?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t remember. I kind of think so, but I don’t - I’m not real clear.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That seemed to be the age that you started having showers after physical education.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah. I remember one time Nick Orlando was having boxing for the boys, and he had me get in a ring with some boy and box. I don’t know why he did that, but I remember being -
MR. HUNNICUTT: You actually put on gloves?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah! Stupid.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did that turn out?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I just was dopey acting, I guess, and got out of there as soon as he’d let me. He was just entertaining people, I think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was quite an icon in Oak Ridge in his day.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, he was, and he could get by with things that if he tried anything - if anybody tried any of his things, they wouldn’t have worked. Another teacher that I had that was really different at Jefferson was Alice Lyman, the band director. I - one day she came around to the seventh grade classes and said, “Can any of you play piano?” And I raised my hand, just because I did take lessons. And she said, “I want you to come be in the band and play the bells,” which, you know, would have a keyboard kind of like a piano; and I did it. And that is another person of whom I was just terrified, and she was so stern and so demanding; and yet outside of school she was just lovely and very charming when I’d see her.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you learn from Miss Lyman?
MRS. MURPHY: I learned what fun it was to be in a group and play music as a group, and I had - I can’t thank her enough for having had that experience. She, truly, was one of those types of teachers. I can remember her going around; and if she didn’t like what a trumpet player might be doing, she’d stick something in the end of the trumpet or put her hand in it. And she was - she said what she thought; and she was very demanding, but that was something that I didn’t have. I doubt that any schools around here would have had much of an experience of getting to be in a band in junior high.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you participate at the football games and basketball games?
MRS. MURPHY: Maybe one kind of a show. And I - because I can remember us practicing, but maybe we would for one of the home games put on a little halftime - march out on the field and play a few songs.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about concerts in the auditorium?
MRS. MURPHY: A few, uh-huh. Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What are some of the other teachers and classes you took at Jefferson?
MRS. MURPHY: I had a Mrs. Cavett for a home room teacher. I remember working on writing and reading with her. The lady who had no faith in my sewing ability was Mrs. Lamp. I’m trying to think about art; that was always important to me - art and music.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was Mr. Clifford Smith the art teacher -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes!
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were there?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t think he was the teacher then, but I did know him and his family.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you caught the bus, and where did the bus let you off when you went to Jefferson?
MRS. MURPHY: Seems like it was around in the front. Seems like we - on a circle or something that kind of was around in the front. But you know what I don’t remember - I’m trying to think. Is that really the way it was, because going down the hill we had to catch the bus at a bus stop to get home, as I remember it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Across from the post office?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Or by the post office.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, so I must be thinking of coming into that circle maybe in a car or something. I have no remembrance, really, of doing anything as far as getting there; and I can remember going out of school and down the hill to the bus stop you’re talking about. I don’t remember how we got there, though. Did we have to walk up the hill to the school? I don’t remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The best I remember, that’s the case; all the buses let out across from the post office, picked you up in front of the post office -
MRS. MURPHY: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the afternoon, and you walked up the hill and down the hill.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I guess so. Gosh! How could one forget walking up that hill? I only remember going down it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was 52 steps -
MRS. MURPHY: Oh, my gosh!
MR. HUNNICUTT: Going up that hill. Were they concrete or wooden when you went to Jefferson?
MRS. MURPHY: Concrete.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the early days I believe they were wooden.
MRS. MURPHY: Really?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Someone else mentioned that. Do you recall any of the stores in Jackson Square that maybe you stopped before or after school?
MRS. MURPHY: Never at that age. Not when I was in Jefferson. I remember stores, but not - you know, I always had to get down and catch the bus and go back home. Now, I remember the movie theaters on weekends and things from Elm Grove on, because we would meet at the Ridge Theater or sometimes the Center, I believe it was - Center Theater.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Ridge Theater located?
MRS. MURPHY: Okay, down by Big Ed’s and right almost connected to it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What - in the summer time between school years, what did you do in the summer time for fun?
MRS. MURPHY: You know how Oak Ridge is so beautifully laid out with greenbelt areas around many of the homes. We had a good woods behind our house. There was a Boy Scout hut kind of thing in a clearing down in our woods. I used to go down in the - or around in those woods and spy on the Boy Scouts and play in that area. Now there again, how safe! A kid could go out and play in the woods and look around and walk around and pick up things, so I did a lot of things like that. I played with kids across the street; and then my family and I got into swimming with the Atomic City Aquatic Club, and we all swam in the summer as we got older.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your mother and father, as the kids grew up, do you recall what kind of outside the home activities they did?
MRS. MURPHY: You know, it’s funny how much activity was involved around that being in a swimming club - the team and all. That became kind of like a - well, those would be the people you would know because your kids were around their kids, and you became friends with those people. I remember my mother worked as a Gray Lady at the hospital before she went to work as an employee. My family went to St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, so they, you know, had some activities in that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you mentioned the family came back to Oak Ridge in a truck. Did they still have the truck, or did they have a car?
MRS. MURPHY: We had a truck the whole time we were on California Avenue, and I honestly don’t remember when we got a station wagon; but you can imagine with three boys and a daughter, you all couldn’t get in the truck, except that sometimes we would ride in the back of the truck, which you can’t do, I think, these days in a pick-up truck. But you can see how limited our transportation by that would have been.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, when you got the station wagon, was that a vehicle that had a lot more room inside?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, that’s how we got around then with four kids and parents.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about summer vacations? Did the family take any summer vacations?
MRS. MURPHY: Very few. We went once or twice to St. Petersburg and visited an aunt and uncle; we stayed at a hotel there on the beach. I remember a couple of summer vacations up in Big Ridge State Park as a family; we would get one of those little cabins up there, and they had swimming area and that kind of thing. But being in that swimming ACAC [Atomic City Aquatic Club] thing, seems like our summers were pretty much taken up with swim meets.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you learn how to swim in that organization?
MRS. MURPHY: I guess I did. I don’t remember how I - ’cause I don’t think I was an especially good swimmer. I went on and became a coach of it for the little kids and then also as an adult helped with it. But I was the kind that could teach more than I could, you know - I wasn’t that good a swimmer myself. My brothers were reasonably good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, tell me what you remember about the Oak Ridge swimming pool.
MRS. MURPHY: Cold. Huge. Just really kind of a sight, I think. When you first see it, you think, “Oh, wow!” because it was so much bigger than anything anybody had around here. When we swam as a team, we often had to go to meets that were pretty far away, because not that many towns had facilities that would allow them to have a swim team like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did the team travel?
MRS. MURPHY: Cars. Family. I can remember once, I think, going on a bus; but mostly families went. I have no idea how my family afforded that, because to go on to swim meets into Georgia and other places, other states, must have been very expensive.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Oak Ridge swimming pool located?
MRS. MURPHY: The same place that it is now - when I went to was there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the Grove Center area?
MRS. MURPHY: Spring, yes, uh-huh.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Back to school - when you started high school. And the high school was located where it is now; is that correct?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, um-hum.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about how different the high school was than junior high?
MRS. MURPHY: I think it was pretty overwhelming in a way; it was just huge. I wonder now whether it’s better for the ninth grade to be in high school, or was it better for the ninth grade to have been at Jefferson. But we were one of the groups that began high school in ninth grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you say that, are you talking about the maturity of your seniors versus the sort of the immaturity of your ninth graders?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, there were such good reasons to keep the ninth grade at a - at another - not send them on to high school right at the time. But I think that we managed. I remember, you know, feeling like it was a pretty big place, but you began to make friends and you had the ones from your middle school, I mean your junior high and your elementary school that were still friends in high school; and then you joined some activities. Again, I went into the band still playing the bells, which was not much of an instrument to play, but it was such fun. That gave me a good place. Girls didn’t have much to do in the way of sports at that time. There were not sports teams. And there were a few clubs and that kind of stuff, and I was on student council and activities around the school; but I think being in the band was a good thing because it was like belonging to a team or a group, so I kind of found a place there. And the man that - the boy that marched behind me in the band, I later married. So, it was a nice part of that, I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the type of dress? Was it different? Still wore dresses to school or -
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I don’t remember ever wearing pants to Oak Ridge High School. We surely to goodness had some activities where pants were allowed, but it must have been on weekends and things; but I don’t - I remember wearing these just straight skirts, a sweater, usually there would be a - it was set—two sweaters: a short-sleeved one, a long - a cardigan one pulled over it, and ballet-looking flats. Or sometimes with the sweater you’d have these little white collars that you wore. In that time there were supposed to be these poodle skirts and all that kind of stuff. I never had one. [inaudible 00:46:25] I must not have been quite in style, but it was in that time era. The boys wore - oh, that was in the happy days era of pink shirts, black pants, real thin belts, hair slicked back or sometimes t-shirts where you put your cigarettes over here and rolled up your shirt sleeves, so if you were really cool - But looking back at pictures of us in the annual, I didn’t see any wild looking styles. We all looked pretty conservative, I think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the style of the girls’ hair?
MRS. MURPHY: Mine is always short in the - I guess there were some pony tails and things like that, but I don’t think I ever changed my hair style or much of anything.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you take any different type classes in high school than junior high?
MRS. MURPHY: Took some art classes, which I just loved. I was not a talented artist, but I enjoyed it very much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you find that the curriculum was harder or about the same as junior high?
MRS. MURPHY: Everything was okay except math, and I really struggled always in math. I think at that point things just kind of caught up with me on math ability. I could do the computational types of things that you do in elementary and maybe in middle school; but as you got into more of the algebra, geometry, and advanced math, I really didn’t do very well. And I didn’t take very many science classes, other than what was required. As you can see, I think I was mostly language, art, that kind of thing, reading.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At what age did you start dating?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I had a few dates when I was in ninth grade, and I’m surprise that I got out of the house. I’m just surprised that my mother let me go. Very carefully supervised, I guess, but I had a few when I was in fourth grade—I mean, I keep saying fourth. I meant ninth grade and a few more in tenth grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were in high school and you dated, where did you go on dates?
MRS. MURPHY: To the movies. Drive-ins. Not necessarily drive-in movies but drive-in eating places.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the Snow White Drive-In?
MRS. MURPHY: Very well, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you recall about it?
MRS. MURPHY: The hamburgers, which are still what linger in my mind every time I smell a Krystal’s hamburgers. Kind of like that. I remember us going to a drive-in in the Elza Gate area. I think it was a type of Oak Terrace or something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oak Terrace had a restaurant up there.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall going to the Oak Terrace in Grove Center?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, and - but somewhere in that transition the one at Elza Gate was probably what I remember more than the one in Grove Center.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about activities? Did you bowl? Other than swimming, did you bowl, or did you play tennis or anything like that? Any other activities?
MRS. MURPHY: I had an awful lot of activities. As I said girls had limited sports possibilities in those days. I don’t know whether I would have or not, but primarily I continued swimming because we had a high school team and student council and, oh, I was Mary in the nativity. And, I don’t know, just - we were really busy; there were a lot of dance things going on that were sponsored either by the school or sponsored by some of the groups in the school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were they held?
MRS. MURPHY: At various places. One place I remember was - in Jackson Square there was a rec building there, and in part of the rec building they would let you have these open houses. Everybody would come, we’d dance, you’d paid your little bit of money to get in, and it’s a miracle to me as I look back on it—I don’t remember there every being any problems or fights or anything, but we’d just - we’d go there and dance every, say, Friday night or Saturday night. I didn’t go to the Wildcat Den. I don’t really know why, but I know a lot of people probably did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember Shep Lauder?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, I just didn’t happen to be around him that much. I worked while I was in high school, and that might have taken a little bit of my time, at Price Florist. And then also, you know, I mentioned babysitting a lot, and I just had a lot of responsibility at home that I pretty much had to help out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was Price Florist located where it is today on the Turnpike?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what did you do when you worked there?
MRS. MURPHY: Oh, I thought I was going to go up there and get to help work with flowers, and I ended up having to file stuff, which I hated. [laughter]
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you were the clerk instead of the florist. [laughter]
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, I surely was. To this day, when I smell flowers in a florist shop, I get kind of -
MR. HUNNICUTT: What other jobs did you have?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I worked as a swimming coach some in the summer, and then—I’m trying to remember how - the sequence of this—I was a playground director for several summers, you know, but I think I would have had to have been out of high school to do that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you said playground directors. What happened at the playground?
MRS. MURPHY: Well -
MR. HUNNICUTT: This was in the summer time I presume.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah. And, you know, the neatest thing - all as a younger person there were playgrounds that you could go to at - almost all the schools, seems like, or areas had a playground; and there would be all kinds of all-day activities there supervised by maybe two college-age kids or sometimes teachers who had a playground job for the summer. And, in fact, all up through elementary school were things that you could stay at school for, and they’d have activities. I remember once - sometimes at Elm Grove there would be dances for sixth grade kids, and you had to go and learn manners and how to dance and that kind of thing. Very organized types of things. But all kinds of activities and clubs, and if it wasn’t at your playground, it was all over town. You could go to all kinds of hobby clubs and doll shows and flower shows and just a million activities. But back to the playground activities—those were, as I said, summer time activities and led usually by college kids, and you could play ball and do arts and crafts and story time and all that kind of stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the playground circus?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes. Always had to come up with some act. I’m trying to remember if we didn’t do Ma and Pa Kettle or something like that at one of them as a skit with our kids to get as many of them in as we could.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned you marched behind your future husband.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you date him in high school?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, pretty much started dating, I think, in my sophomore year, and we - I - it’s just kind of sad to meet somebody at fifteen you, that you probably are going to marry because we had a long time to go, you know, of just dating. And yet we had a lot of fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall home milk deliveries?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, I’d forgotten about milk bottles. You put your milk bottles - we put empties out, our glass ones out. Yeah. Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about other home traveling salesmen or door-to-door salesmen?
MRS. MURPHY: Fuller Brush, I believe. Other than that I can’t think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned your mother, after the children got up in age, and she went to school and became a nurse.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that correct? Tell me a little bit about her work history.
MRS. MURPHY: Well -
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned earlier about it.
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But elaborate a little more about it.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, she generally worked the 4-12 shift in the Emergency Room, and so that’s how I got into the babysitting more part of it and all and helping with the little brothers; but she was very calm, very cool in the Emergency Room. She said she liked to take care of people, get them fixed, and send them on; but she also was a very lovely, calm, and kind person doing this nursing, and she was good in the delivery area, the maternity floor. And she eventually went on and became a nurse in an office for Dr. Earl Eversole. But it seems to me like she was involved with the hospital even earlier because she did do Gray Lady work, and I was awfully proud of her for taking the courses and going back at her age to classes; and it was not easy at all. It was a very extensive course.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how old she was when she did that?
MRS. MURPHY: I want to say maybe later 40’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you feel having to babysitting for your younger brothers while she went to work?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t think - I mean, I think I knew it was necessary that I be around and just - It was something I needed to do. Certainly, I think I was more serious than some of the other kids. I didn’t have really much freedom to run around. I mean, I don’t mean to say that I was ever deprived of getting to date and do things. I always had time to get to do those kinds of things, but I just pretty much had some responsibilities that were hard to deal with if I had something else. But I got out for band practice and that kind of stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, in that time kids were - knew they had to be responsible and take charge sort of, is that what you’re saying?
MRS. MURPHY: I guess I thought I did, I don’t - or maybe that’s just the sort of person I might have been. I guess I just felt some responsibility for them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did - what year did you graduate from Oak Ridge High School?
MRS. MURPHY: 1958.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And after graduation, what did you do?
MRS. MURPHY: I went to Lincoln Memorial University, and my husband did, too, in Harrogate, Tennessee. Are you familiar with where it is? It is right where the Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia state lines converge, and a lot of my relatives from Middlesboro had gone there; and I’d had grandparents who had - one of them taught there, and so it was just a family-involved place that I’d always been familiar with, and that’s where I attended college.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mention your husband, at the time your future husband. Was he in the same grade that you were?
MRS. MURPHY: We - well, he was actually older than I was. He went to UT on - and played tennis; and, I don’t know, UT just didn’t seem to be his thing, and so he transferred. When I went to LMU, he transferred to LMU; and we both then ended up graduating from there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s get his name, instead of referring to him as “he.”
MRS. MURPHY: Alright. His name is John Murphy. He was a really good City of Oak Ridge tennis player. Good athlete. He’s won a lot of city tournaments.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he play tennis in high school, as well?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, and I think that his tennis team as a senior, perhaps, was the only undefeated tennis team that Oak Ridge High’s ever had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, was he a year ahead of you?
MRS. MURPHY: Two.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Two years. So, he’s graduated from high school, and were you still dating when -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was a senior?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, we were. And while he was at UT, we continued to date some; and he’d come home on weekends. I had just a few things, I went to some dances and things with people that I was friends with in high school but, primarily, continued to date him.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the classes that you took when you went to college?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I started off taking some business classes thinking I needed to get a job, and it was kind of like that sewing machine. I just didn’t have the - quite what I needed to - the taker of shorthand, which you had to do back then, and typing and all. And I quickly realized that I was fooling myself. I had coached swimming, been a playground director, babysat. Everything I’d ever done had involved children and working with children, and I don’t know where I had missed the idea that I needed to be an elementary school teacher. And so I went into that, and that was exactly what I needed to do; so, mostly, I took the regular college curriculum that you have to take, but then my classes were, primarily, for elementary education.
MR. HUNNICUTT: For people that may review this interview, tell me what shorthand is.
MRS. MURPHY: Someone is dictating to a person what they want to say, and they’re saying it out loud. The shorthand taker has learned various symbols that would represent words and letters so that you’re able, hopefully, to write those symbols down fast enough to keep up with what the person is saying. I surely was not one of those. [laughter]
MR. HUNNICUTT: Another sewing machine?
MRS. MURPHY: It sure was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, when you graduated from college, what happened then?
MRS. MURPHY: John was offered a job. No, he was - he was given a graduate fellowship to UT. LMU was just an excellent little school in the sciences, and he received a graduate fellowship at UT in certain areas of science. He had thought he was going to dental school, which he really didn’t want to do, so he went to UT; and so one us had to do some working, although he was picking up some money as a graduate assistant. And I was so fortunate to apply to Oak Ridge to teach. I don’t remember if I ever even applied anyplace else, but I did and was hired.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MRS. MURPHY: 1962.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, were you and your future husband still - future husband and -
MRS. MURPHY: We were married, because we got married while we were at LMU.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MRS. MURPHY: ’60. 1960.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where did you get married?
MRS. MURPHY: Here, at St. Stephens.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In Oak Ridge.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you applied for a teacher’s position in Oak Ridge, and did they accept your application?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, they did, and I was offered a job at the old Linden. You know, there’s a Linden Elementary School today, but the site of the old Linden was in a little bit of a different location back then. So, that was my first teaching job, and I taught fourth grade. And I taught there for a few years and then became pregnant with our second child. Our first child was born right at the end of our graduation from LMU, and I saved all my cuts from class—you could get three—to get home, have the baby, and go back to school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your first child’s name?
MRS. MURPHY: Mike. Mike Murphy. And, bless his heart, various friends of mine—I know I’m going backwards instead of forwards—but any of various friends of mine would come over and keep him while John was in class or if I were in class, so he graduated with us, kind of, about a month old. I rode to Oak Ridge from LMU with the college baseball team to go to the hospital. They were playing a game, and John was - who had been playing tennis, played - had a year of eligibility to play baseball, and he did; and they were coming here, so I rode down here with them. They had a match - I mean, a game that day, and they dropped me off and went back to school; and I had the baby and then took him back. It was quite an experience!
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ll say it was. I’ve never heard such a story. [laughter]
MRS. MURPHY: It was funny because John had no sooner gotten back to LMU after the baseball game, since I had to stay here, than my mother called and told him to come back, that the baby was going to be born. So, and this was that night, after having been let - dropped off, he came down Powell Valley from, you know - through Lafollette that way, and he had the window rolled down and was singing real loud to keep himself awake; and he got picked up by the sheriff. I don’t know whether someone had called them and said, “There’s a man drunk out here, because he’s singing real loud as he’s driving.” And he, John, explained to him what he was trying to do was to get to Oak Ridge for the birth of his first son, and the man said, “How fast do you want to go?” And he brought him to the city limits; he couldn’t come in because of jurisdiction, but anyhow - well, I didn’t need to go back into that, but that was our first child. And when I was teaching at Linden, I became pregnant again, and you didn’t teach if you were pregnant back in those days. You could not be pregnant and continue teaching. You were supposed to tell them so they’d get rid of you, I guess. So, I did have to quit at a certain point and drop out of teaching, and so I stayed out for a few years there and then went back in later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you recall about Oak Ridge Hospital? Just a little bit. Apparently, it must have been a good hospital, or you wouldn’t have wanted to come back to have your child here.
MRS. MURPHY: Well, we had four of them there, so since we were here, that’s where we went; and it was quite a, I think, a very good hospital. And I always felt like if you were going to get good care and knowledgeable help, this would be the place to be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Kind of describe your first day on the job as a school teacher in Oak Ridge. What grade was that?
MRS. MURPHY: This was fourth grade. I remember they asked me how old I was, and I said, “How old do you think I am?” And they - one said, “About 48?” and I think at 22 or however old I was I wasn’t too happy about that. But it was - it was pleasant. I knew right away this is exactly what I needed - what should be doing. I loved it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they tell you about a particular dress code that you had to -
MRS. MURPHY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Wear or anything like that?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t think so. I think it was just implied that you were supposed to come in looking as a person would who would be on a job and most any job. That - it really could be a problem sometimes, if you were an elementary school teacher, and you needed to be out on the playground and wearing, you know - looking more dressed up than, perhaps, you would today, especially with an elementary bunch of kids running around. I can remember stepping in a hole and falling. I guess I must have had on some high heeled shoes; I don’t remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the kids dress any different in your fourth grade class than when you went to the fourth grade?
MRS. MURPHY: You know, I don’t think it was that different.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you were in the setting the same as you remember in Oak Ridge school?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, yeah, it was pretty much like Elm Grove that I had attended; at the old Linden it was very much the same. You know, the schools are all kind of laid out - one or two would be laid out the same way, and another one or two would be laid out; but it didn’t seem that different from Elm Grove to me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many students did you have?
MRS. MURPHY: Probably about 23, 25.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it a mixture more girls than boys, or do you recall?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t remember that. Over the years I’ve had, you know, times I had more boys than girls and vice versa. One year I had seven boys and all - everybody else was female; it was kind of an odd situation. But one thing that was different, we had no black children because this was, of course, in the days before schools had been integrated. That happened while I was in Oak Ridge High School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s talk a little bit about that. What was your thoughts when, when you first saw the first black children come to school?
MRS. MURPHY: You know, I had not thought about that much before when I went to school, when there aren’t any black people and children around or people of any - much other ethnic background, even though I knew such people lived in Oak Ridge. But that’s the way the world was, so I didn’t think about it. After I realized what was happening, I was just really kind of distressed with myself and others, just thinking, “Is this the way it is? This shouldn’t be right.” So, when the kids came to Oak Ridge High School, I think I was a sophomore, I don’t remember that we had any big problems as some schools did. It went, probably, as smoothly as it could, but that’s primarily because there was no interaction. We were - they were there, we were there, we were all there, but it was not - we were not really a -
MR. HUNNICUTT: They did their thing?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You guys did your -
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t think anybody was unpleasant to anybody much. Yes, I know there were some incidences along the way, things I’ve been told, like in sports. I know that sometimes Oak Ridge High wouldn’t play another school because they didn’t want to play black players, and we had by that time taken - ’cause some of had become members of the football team, things like that. But I don’t remember any big deal; it was just a part of life, and that’s what shamed me. It was maybe that we ignored each other, and that seemed so wrong as I look back on it now; and I keep thinking, “What could I have done? Why did I - why didn’t I do something to be more welcoming to those kids? They must have been terrified.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that was the way the times were in those days.
MRS. MURPHY: So, we just took it as that’s what you did. I probably would have been very much out of place if I had tried to -
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’m sure we all think about that, and we could say, “Why - why didn’t I do something different?”
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, but that’s bothered me as I’ve gotten older and looked back on it from - with hindsight.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, now, let’s fast forward a little bit on up through your teaching years. Tell me about your students. What type of students have you seen over the years; and, you know, did you find some that were misbehaving? Did you find some that were fast learners, slow learners? What - give me some of your experiences related to your school children?
MRS. MURPHY: When I began teaching again after the Linden experience, and I was out for a while, and by that time I had four children; and that’s one of the reasons I went back, because somebody else had to help out money-wise in the family, Oak Ridge by that time had—well, how shall I say this—taken the black children from Oak Ridge and put them in different elementary schools, depending on where they lived. All the ones on the same street would go to the same elementary school, so that was different at first. At Glenwood I had a certain section. As - the longer I taught there, they moved to the Glenwood area and stayed there, which made it great because that was their neighborhood school then. And I only mention that because at Glenwood I had the nicest mixture of backgrounds, socio-economic levels, educational backgrounds in the families that I taught. But it was a very, very neighborhood kind of school; and it really became better as the children that were being bused in there became the neighborhood, and those kids played together. I think the diversity of that school at the time I was teaching at Glenwood was just wonderful. The kids who went to school during that time, which included my own (and this is why, I guess, I feel this way) remained friends, oh, well into their high school years; and I know at one of the graduation or reunion-type things—one of my son’s classes—all the Glenwood kids got together to have their picture made. Just as a remembrance of what their days were like. One of my children, when he went to Austin Peay University, was asked to write a remembrance of his elementary school days, and he wrote about Glenwood. And they asked if they could keep it in their learning lab, because they said every kid ought to have these kinds of elementary school experience that he had had there. Just a mixture of lives, friends, and just very typical. I had some very bright children; I had some children with problems, had some children whose families had problems. I absolutely loved it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What grades did you teach at Glenwood?
MRS. MURPHY: Fifth and then sixth.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, Glenwood School’s located where?
MRS. MURPHY: In the eastern end of Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you prepare your lessons for each day?
MRS. MURPHY: That really is time-consuming and today probably would take even more time, because you have so many things that they have to - you have to provide your lesson plans and the details and that kind of thing, and they have to be looked at. Mostly, I just wrote down every day the pages where I want to pick up and start the next day, but there was not quite as much—what should I say?—regulated, mandated. You’ve got to do this, this, and this; and you’ve got to do this kind of testing, and they have to pass this kind of - it - that was - I just don’t know that I could do that, but it was getting that way, when I finally did retire—more and more making teaching in many ways very difficult. Maybe there will be some good that will come of it, I guess; but I just had a great deal of freedom, I felt, to teach, in the way I felt, best the material that I knew I had to cover. I knew what we had - books, curriculum books - we knew what we had to cover, and then it was just up to me to take it and run with it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who was the principal at Glenwood at that time?
MRS. MURPHY: Lannis Pullham.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, as a teacher, did you feel like you were strong or weak in any subject matter, as far as teaching your children?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah, I felt that I was not very adequate in science. I remember once trying to make a volcano in the classroom, and it blew up and hit the ceiling and all…came down around - rained on my head. That was not my forte, and I was okay with social studies, and I could teach math; but I was more comfortable with the kids that were having trouble with math because I had, and I could understood their, you know - I could understand where they, perhaps, might be quite smart but need more time, that kind of thing. And reading was probably my strongest area for teaching because I absolutely love to read, and I read to the kids every day just as someone had read to me when I was in sixth grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was your classroom structure like it was when you went to Oak Ridge schools?
MRS. MURPHY: I think so. We were in - I was there at a period where they were having open classrooms, and people were moving around, so there was a door between my classroom and the other fifth grade classroom or the other sixth grade classroom. And the one thing it did do, I guess, was have - perhaps if there were two teachers like there would have been at Glenwood, there could be three, but we split up. We took the things that we were stronger in, and one would - teacher would teach the science or the math, and I did the reading and the language arts types things and sometimes social studies. But we worked that out so that we weren’t really teaching every subject. And I enjoyed teaching every subject, except that I felt like I gave science kind of a short shrift, since I enjoyed the other things better.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have any, I guess, rules about teaching when you taught? As the years went on, did your teaching rules change -
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: From the school administration?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes. This was the way I’d - the rule, in a way, that I have with my own children, and I kind of went to teaching with it. And this will sound so simplistic—I guess it sounds like of stupid—but I would just write the word “respect” on the board, and I said, “This is going to cover every rule that I have; you must be respectful of each other, of the school itself and its property, of me, of your – the materials, the desks, and the equipment in the school, and you absolutely must retain that respect. You don’t - do not have to like the person next you, you don’t have to be their best friend; but you will be respectful to them.” It worked for me; now, it might not for somebody else. With my own children it was kind of the same way. “Call home if you’re going to be late, and other than that, we just expect you to behave yourself.” And pretty much they did. Now—I don’t know—Matt, my youngest son, would - was so nice. He’d call and say, “I’m going to be late getting home. I’m over at such and such.” Well, I don’t know where he was, but he called me, you know; and I knew he was all right. So, I just - I felt like if I treated the kids respectfully, they would begin to get the idea; and I just did not tolerate any type of bullying or put-downs or anything like that. I couldn’t save the whole class. I always had a homeroom class. I couldn’t save them outside my door, but that was something they knew they just would - they really would get in trouble. I tried not to send kids to the office, and when I got - that was in elementary school; I pretty much handled it myself. I wanted it not to be like, “Wait till your daddy gets home,” you know, but I just tried to handle everything that I could. And it worked. Now, in junior high I was continuing not to send kids to the office, ’cause I could generally get it worked out. That wasn’t so good because I found out that they needed to keep a more accurate record of any type of behavior so that they could pull out a folder if they had a parent conference or something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about homework? Did you believe in a lot of homework for your students?
MRS. MURPHY: Well, I really didn’t believe in it. When I was in elementary school we would have some, and the same in junior high. Most - I had it - I gave - I gave homework every night but much more for the purposes of: Take this home. What do you need to take home tonight? What do you need to do? How long will it take you to do it? What do you need to bring back? And then, so that parents could see, but it would not take any kid very long to do it. It might be looking over some spelling words or doing some kind of vocabulary thing, but I didn’t pile it on at night. I felt like the kids that I taught, particularly when we were in middle school and they didn’t get recess, needed to play basketball and get on a bike and just run around. I thought some kids needed to go home and play and then come to homework, and other kids needed to go home and do their homework and then go out and play; but either way I wanted them to have time. We all had to let down sometimes, and the pressure was really on, though, as I continued teaching in the kinds of schools to give homework, to grade it, and to return it promptly. And that was very difficult to do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you go to - was it Jefferson Junior High you -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Taught in? Where was that located?
MRS. MURPHY: At - it was on, the new building, where it is today, over off of Fairbanks Road, but I’ve forgotten the year that that was built. It still looks very nice and is very well-kept. It, at the time that I came into it, was seventh, eighth, and ninth. Well, at some point while—I think my husband was on school board then—they had to reconfigure the grades in order to get the best use of space. So, the sixth grade was going to enter the junior high and become a middle school, eventually. Sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth was not a - to me a happy combination. The sixth graders were quite a far cry from having anything in common with the ninth graders, but it worked because that school really worked so hard to try to make us welcome and help us to fit in. But after that, the ninth grade eventually moved on up, and it was a better configuration with sixth, seventh and eighth. Then the fifth grade—same thing; for space they built on to Jefferson and moved the fifth grade up into the junior high, and they were very protected and very nurtured like you would in an elementary school. But - and it worked fine, I think, because we all tried to make that happen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: As a teacher did you find in junior high that the type of teaching had changed than it was in the elementary school?
MRS. MURPHY: It was really, really hard the first few years. We didn’t know whether we were elementary school teachers or whether we were secondary school teachers; and the school system would have these in-services and all sorts of these extra things you had to attend, and we were kind of getting it from both ends, from elementary topics and sessions and seminars and workshops and also from the secondary. We didn’t really know what we were, and when we went in there it was Jefferson Junior High school. When the term changed to middle school, that kind of began to be a different type of set-up, organization of the school. Our principal at the time, when we first went in there, was running the school very much like you would a secondary school. You know, you sat in your rows in your desk, and you took notes, and you did all the things you might do in a class - as you would in high school. He was kind of shocked, I think, when he came down the hall when we all had moved over there; and we had little groupings of kids and all, because that was not necessarily the way a junior high school was structured. Over the years he was so good at really trying to, you know, take in what we were used to. We just had a hard time trying to define what were we. Well, we were elementary school teachers, so we were used to teaching all things often, or at least most of the things, to a homeroom class or at the most two groups; we would switch them back and forth. But we were responsible for everything. I knew those kids very well because I had them all day. When we got to junior high, we thought we had to change classes just like the rest of the junior high was doing, so we were shuffling kids in and out the door for every period for a different subject. It was really, really hard for them and for us to try to prepare that many subjects but every period with a different group of kids.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who was the principal?
MRS. MURPHY: Robert Moss, the most wonderful principal, and he really tried to, you know, to get the right balance there; but I found myself really disoriented because - I mentioned the ways that I felt rules should be and the ways that - the expectations that I’d had and discipline, even. All were based on my relationship with them and their relationship with me. Well, if you only had a kid for 50 minutes, you didn’t get much of a relationship. If I’d had them all day, sooner or later they’d say, “Okay, I give in. The old girl’s going to keep pestering me until I, you know, behave like she wants me to.” And that wasn’t true when you just had them for a little period of time, and the bell rang, and up they popped, and out the door they went. I had no nurturing to do. It was very hard. It took a while, and we eventually broke into teams so that we didn’t have that many children; and we also broke into specialties of this is what we’ll teach, and I, primarily, had the reading and language arts.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned your husband was on the school board. That brings up the question…did you have any conflict of interests, since he was on the school board, and you were a teacher?
MRS. MURPHY: You know, I expected that to come up quite a bit. I’m sure that there were people that felt that way or thought that that - we managed to get through it. There were times that I felt uncomfortable, but he didn’t. I don’t think he ever did. But once I kind of chastised him for not raising the teachers’ salary and told him he could sleep on the couch, and I took his pillow in there and told him he could just sleep in there. That’s about - and that really wasn’t very good of me, but primarily, we just found that our best bet was just -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Teachers didn’t get a raise after that?
MRS. MURPHY: No, not much, but I just really tried to be ignorant of all the things that he might be doing with the school board.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you see from the discipline standpoint from the time you first, say, started in - at Jefferson till the time you retired? How had that changed, or did it change?
MRS. MURPHY: This is one of the times I will sound so either deaf or dumb or looking through rose colored glasses. The kids - they need - wanted the same things. They wanted me to trust them and respect them and to act like I was glad to see them, glad to be there. I wanted them to be glad to be there, glad to be in my class, have respect for me; and I felt, often, as long as we could keep this kind of mutual, “I know what she wants me to do, and I know what they want me to do,” we managed fine, so I really think the kids’ needs were the same. The world became very different. I was so aware of that so many times. I used to refer to television shows, or I might say a line from a commercial; and they could all repeat part of it, which sounds like a silly thing, but back in those days there were only a few channels. Now, there are ten million channels. We didn’t have any common cultural things, because the world just suddenly kind of, it seems to me, exploded! I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but I remember one time I - we were reading a book, and I said, you know, it was about a deputy sheriff, and I said something, “Whenever I read this book or whenever we read this book aloud”—it was a book I’d used several years—“this character reminds me of Barney Fife.” And they said, “Well, who’s that?” And I just felt really sad. At that - I realized how I had not moved with the times. Another time, I - at the beginning of the year, I always use these old 45 records with my kids and put the names of the new students and something like, “You’re - you’ll be a hit,” or something stupid like that. I began to realize they didn’t have 45s; they didn’t know what they were, so things changed. The world changed very much during this time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: As a teacher you had to change with the times?
MRS. MURPHY: I certainly did, and the pressures that the kids had and to - I hope I’m not just jumping around, but this is just such a big topic to me. I can remember when I had kids that had problems at home, and I knew it, I always wanted to work with them and protect them. And I did in what ways I could. I began to realize that my best bet with them was to have school be a safe place and expect them to do the work and for us to work through it no matter what bad things had gone on in their life or mine and just attend to that, and it could almost be a refuge in a sense if I just continued to do things without accommodating any more than I had to. And I mean, what I guess I’m saying, I couldn’t think, “Oh, bless your heart; I know you’ve had a hard time,” even though I did feel that way a lot of times, but we just would go along with business as usual. Too many stresses.
MR. HUNNICUTT: From a parent’s standpoint it’s probably very difficult to understand how a teacher - what a teacher really has to know to be a teacher. Not just the subjects, but the compassion and the psychology from it -
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And everything you deal with from the day to day activities.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I admire teachers because they have a hard job. Sure do. When you were teaching, who took care of your children?
MRS. MURPHY: That was really hard because I did go back when the younger two were very young, and one was an aunt, who took care of them for a bit, and one was a neighbor who had children the same age as mine. And it just was wild for a while - and then to come home and have four kids. And by then some of my older kids were getting in junior high, and they would play on every sports team; and I’d have to load up the younger ones, who were crying because they couldn’t watch Gilligan’s Island while we went to pick up the older ones at Jefferson. I think my car automatically drove to Jefferson to pick up whoever was practicing after school. It was a crazy time. I graded papers with kids sitting on my lap at night, ’cause I hadn’t seen them all day. We let them stay up later, which was not a good parenting or mother thing; but I hadn’t seen them, so I pretty much let them stay up and fall asleep when -
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you feel like you were a big help to them as far as helping them with their homework or questions they had?
MRS. MURPHY: No, I think they had to get stuff on their own. I’ve sometimes felt, “Gee, I’m being neglectful.” My own children went to the school where I was teaching, so that was kind of hard for them at times, I’m sure. But we managed okay, for the most part.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is it ever a case that you would teach your own child, or do they prevent that from happening?
MRS. MURPHY: I did, because at Glenwood there were only two teachers per grade. So, yes, I did have them, and they -we got through that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have to kind of talk to them beforehand and let them know that you were the teacher, not the mother, at that particular point?
MRS. MURPHY: No, they just didn’t push it, and they didn’t really want to be connected, you know, necessarily with me in school; and I tried to not make it difficult or uncomfortable for them. It was further emphasized, I guess, when their dad was on the school board and their mother was a teacher. But they did okay. You know, they just stayed pretty much who they were and made good grades and not some good grades and that kind of stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All your children go through the Oak Ridge schools?
MRS. MURPHY: Yes, um-hmm.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where are they today?
MRS. MURPHY: Our oldest son Mike is a teacher at Jefferson Middle School—teaches science—and he’s been the basketball coach, up until about a year ago, for quite a while; and he asked my husband to be his assistant, so we kind of were back into the coaching/teaching things for a while. Mike had taught at Bearden Middle School before he came back - out to Oak Ridge. It had always been his dream to teach here. Melinda is a historic preservation person in Decatur, Alabama. She had to do an internship while she was a senior at Middle Tennessee State, and she stayed on there since she was right out of college. That’s a really interesting job. Not much money, but an interesting job. Marcia is a - teaches part time at the Episcopal school in Knoxville. And Matt is an elementary school principal in Clinton at North Clinton.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Outside the school you mentioned church. Are you heavily involved in your church?
MRS. MURPHY: More so now than I was, you know, when I was teaching. The last thing on God’s green earth I thought I’d ever do is teach Sunday school after I got through teaching school. I - after I retired somebody asked if I would, and I thought, “Would you dare ask me to teach Sunday school?” And I got to thinking about it. I have been so blessed to be allowed to have this kind of teaching career that I loved. I absolutely loved it, and it’s probably time that I tried to do it and give back something in some - an area at least I had some experience. So, yes, I teach Sunday school; and my husband and I do some different things around the church. We’re probably not as heavily involved as other people, but we sure have been involved with kids in the town, you know, through - my husband’s coached every sport there’s been in Oak Ridge over the years, and - but between the two of us, we feel like we’ve done activities with places where we could be of benefit and, perhaps, experiences that we’ve had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many years were you a teacher?
MRS. MURPHY: Thirty four.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you’ve got a unique situation, and you went through the Oak Ridge school system.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You went to college; you came back as an Oak Ridge school teacher.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you retired as a school teacher.
MRS. MURPHY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That seems to be - to me to be maybe to be the one and only person I’ve ever heard of to have that experience. Is - how do you think about it?
MRS. MURPHY: As near as I can tell, I may be. I know there probably - have certainly been some since then; but at the time when I entered kindergarten in 1945, and if you count up the years, you have 12, actually 13, years of school from starting with kindergarten and then 12 years of school till your graduation; then you go away to school, to college, for four years, at that point Oak Ridge had been here long enough for somebody to do that, and that would have been by graduating in 1958 and then having four years of college. So, if I wasn’t the first person hired back, I sure had to be among the first ones.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you feel safe the whole time you were living in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MURPHY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why?
MRS. MURPHY: As I told the kids in my classes, it was like living in a giant playpen. You were pretty much in it; the bad guys were on the outside of it because most of the people that were inside had been cleared by the FBI and others to be a person that, as far as they could tell, would not be harmful. I don’t know; that - maybe that was a false sense of security because I don’t know how they were cleared, but at any rate we all had the run of the town.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How do you think the city has progressed over the years?
MRS. MURPHY: That’s a really hard question. When I went away to LMU, which was a very small college, after having gone to a very large high school and gone through school system that had just every advantage that you could wish that you could have, I began to realize when I got to LMU how smug an attitude we had in Oak Ridge. We just took for granted, you know, this is - this is - we’re the best, and we got all this stuff; and I’m sure we were viewed by people around us as just being obnoxious, possibly, or thinking we were better than others, ’cause we really did have better sports teams and music departments and schools and school teachers and - to some extent. And we’ve gone through some hard times in Oak Ridge just like other towns all around us. But that really caught me up short—realizing an attitude that I didn’t like when I thought about it, and I was feeling guilty of it myself. I could remember even in college a teacher would ask where I was from or something, and I would say, “Oak Ridge.” “Oh, well, you’re from Oak Ridge; no wonder, you know, you might - you all got… ” It was not a put-down, exactly, but a recognition that we had more things here than other people, and now I see Oak Ridge as just a regular town with many of the same kinds of problems that other places have—perhaps less, even though that’s hard to believe sometime in criminal activities and things. But I still think there’s an expectation here that we’re supposed to do stuff, that we’re supposed to do it well; and that means, you know, when you’re at Oak Ridge High School and you win some national science award, as I saw some kids did just recently—won it again, the Siemens Award, that’s just what you do here. There’s an expectation. The funds may not be there like they used to be, the government providing everything is not there like it once was when I - we were little; but I still think, overall, most parents want their children to really have the best, and they’re willing to back it up and do what they can to make it happen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything else that you’d like to talk about that we haven’t talked about?
MRS. MURPHY: I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’m trying to brag on myself, because I really don’t - I’m not telling this for this reason - that reason. When I retired I received an award from - it was for the Retired Teachers of Tennessee Hall of Fame. I have no idea how I was asked or selected for that. It was a shock to my system, but what I realized when I went to the awards ceremony, it was in Nashville the next year after I retired, what I really was receiving was an award for all the teachers who had come to Oak Ridge not knowing where in the world they were coming to, you know, going to be going during the war years and all; I was just their product. Do you understand what I mean?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MURPHY: The very teachers that had been recruited from all over the place, as I understood Dr. Blankenship did…went around and recruited who he thought would be really strong teachers, those were the ones that I had, so I was their product; and I got to continue their work because I had learned from them. And so I just represented them in that area, and I hope you understand that I’m not - I think I was just continuing as a teacher to try to be good like I wanted to be, like some of the teachers I’d had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, it’s been my pleasure to interview you. I’ve learned a lot from this interview. I didn’t realize to some degree how much a teacher had to go through to teach kids in today’s society, but I’m sure that this oral interview will be a very, very good addition to the Oak Ridge history. And when someone in the future decides they wanting to look at - listen to your interview, they’re going to learn a whole lot about the Oak Ridge school system and your life.
MRS. MURPHY: I so appreciate this opportunity. I’ve had this feeling, this need that I’ve got to say this sometime so that people will know the background of what it was like to grow up here and to go to school here, and I really appreciate having this opportunity. Thank you for your kindness and your making this a really pleasant interview.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, thank you for your time.
[End of Interview]
[Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited at Mrs. Murphy’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]